Before the two Britons could master their dismay, Bhagwan Dass had run towards the cave and was imploring the holy man to give them shelter and hiding.  For a while he listened merely, and his first response was to lift the bowl and invite them with a gesture to stay their hunger.  Famished though they were, they hesitated, and reading the reason in their eyes, he spoke for the first time.

“It will not harm you,” said he in Hindustani:  “and the villagers below bring me more than I can eat.”

From the moment of setting eyes on him—­Prior used to declare—­a blessed sense of protection fell upon the party; a feeling that in the hour of extreme need God had suddenly put out a shield, under the shadow of which they might rest in perfect confidence.  And indeed, though they knew the mountain to be swarming with their enemies, they entered the cave and slept all that day like children.  Whether or no meanwhile their enemies drew near they never discovered:  but Prior, awaking towards nightfall, saw the hermit still seated at the entrance as they had found him, and lay for a while listening to the click of his rosary as he told bead after bead.

He must, however, have held some communication with the unseen village in the valley:  for three bowls of milk and rice stood ready for them.  They supped, forbearing—­upon Bhagwan Dass’s advice—­to question him, though eager to know if he had a mind to help them further, and how he might contrive it.  Until moonrise he gave no sign at all; then rising gravely, crutch and bowl in hand, stepped a pace or two beyond the entrance and whistled twice—­as they supposed for a guide.  But the only guides that answered were two small mountain foxes—­a vixen and her half-grown cub—­that came bounding around an angle of the rock and fawned about his feet while he caressed them and spoke to them softly in a tongue which none of the party understood.  And so they all set out, turning their faces westward and keeping to the upper ridges; the foxes trotting always a few paces ahead and showing the way.

All that night they walked as in a dream, and came at daybreak to a ledge with a shrine upon it, and in the shrine a stone figure of a goddess, and below the ledge—­perhaps half a mile below it—­a village clinging dizzily to the mountain-side.—­There was no food in the shrine, only a few withered wreaths of marigolds:  but the holy man must have spoken to his foxes, for at dawn a priest came toiling up the slope with a filled bowl so ample that his two arms scarcely embraced it.  The priest set down the food, took the hermit’s blessing and departed in silence:  and this was the only human creature they saw on their journey.  Not for all their solicitation would the hermit join them in eating:  and at this they marvelled most of all:  for he had walked far and moderately fast, yet seemed to feel less fatigue than any of them.  That night, as soon as the moon rose, he started afresh with the same long easy stride, and the foxes led the way as before.