Russia. But most of all, of these people of India—they hold my attention. They say there are a billion people in Asia. There are only a few of our people in America, compared to that. Life is strange. All this disturbs me. Sometimes I almost wish I hadn’t asked to come.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” Gale exclaimed, squaring her shoulders. “For no matter how many worlds I live in after this, I can visit this one but once. I want to see it all.”

After that they walked on in silence until they came to a winding path leading up a hill. There were no homes on the hill—only ancient trees and the solemn air of early evening hours.

“Let’s follow the path,” Isabelle suggested. “There’s nothing I like better than following a strange path, and I’ve heard there’s a temple up here somewhere.”

“Okay. Let’s go.” Gale led the way.

The path grew steep and rocky as they advanced, but the rocks were worn smooth, as if ten million pairs of feet had passed that way.

“Ten million,” Gale thought. “India is very old. But where could they all have been going?”

The forest trees that loomed above the trail grew thicker and taller as they advanced until at last they shut out the sun.

“It’s like something I read in a book called Pilgrim’s Progress,” Isabelle said with a little shudder. “I’ve never cared much for shadows since I read that book. I was twelve then. I love the sunshine best.”

“Pilgrim’s Progress,” Gale murmured. “Perhaps we are pilgrims on some great quest.” She spoke more wisely than she knew, but this quest was to have a strange ending.

Gale was one of those persons whose mind is driven to thoughts of wild determination as she walked rapidly or climbed some steep hill. The steeper the path became, the deeper the shadows, the more fiercely her mind worked on the problem that she knew lay very close at hand. Would she, or would she not go forward with the colonel and his men as they retraced the steps he had taken in retreat?

“I’ll beard him in his den,” she whispered fiercely. “I’ll say to him, ‘Colonel, all my people have been fighters,—five generations that we know about. Dad was in the World War; Grandfather in the Spanish-American War, and my great grandfather in the Civil War. I have no brothers so my father sent me. You just 

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