days ; had, through mischance, been separated from the caravan with which they journeyed thence ; had been befriended by the nomad Kirghiz, had waited ten days for our coming, and for another ten days had now been our patient, courteous companions. Each rode a stout pony, which must carry also a twenty days' provision of bread and tea, and such thick clothing as was not permanently worn on the body. No daintiness in this, my lady fair, but if your husband be full of zeal for the life to come, if your duty and your pleasure be to follow him, and mayhap gain heaven also, if you live in Western China, and if Mecca lie across vast deserts, titanic mountains, burning sands and freezing snows, then, O lady fair, you must, like the rest of us, Hadjis and explorers, bundle your delicate body in many warm folds and leave it there for many cold days. The good man had already won the green turban, but now his soul yearned again for the sacred city, and this time he goes to live in the shadow of the Kaaba until his spirit shall have been caught up to its awaiting joys, welcomed home by the compassionate Prophet, whose word is the Law. And she goes with him, a plain, brown woman, forty-five or more, unconscious of her heroism.
She has done more for duty on earth and for hope of heaven than you, average man or woman, may dream of doing. Her home life was of scant cornfort,—you would consider it hard, indeed,—but it was languorous ease compared with the strain which for weeks she had now uncomplainingly borne. It is three months since she quitted some quiet sheltering roof, another month or more ere they may reach
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