There is a sudden wind among those stones that casts men down on the stillest day.

But what should such folk care for the Devil of Eua!' Then did Kim, aching in every fibre, dizzy with looking down, footsore with cramping desperate toes into inadequate crannies, take joy in the day's march--such joy as a boy of St Xavier's who had won the quarter-mile on the flat might take in the praises of his friends.

The hills sweated the ghi and sugar suet off his bones; the dry air, taken sobbingly at the head of cruel passes, firmed and built out his upper ribs; and the tilted levels put new hard muscles into calf and thigh.
They meditated often on the Wheel of Life--the more so since, as the lama said, they were freed from its visible temptations.

Except the grey eagle and an occasional far-seen bear grubbing and rooting on the hillside; a vision of a furious painted leopard met at dawn in a still valley devouring a goat; and now and again a bright-coloured bird, they were alone with the winds and the grass singing under the wind.

The women of the smoky huts over whose roofs the two walked as they descended the mountains, were unlovely and unclean, wives of many husbands, and afflicted with goitre.