"I understand," said Linforth. "But if he has changed so much, he will have changed to me."

"Yes," Ralston admitted. He turned again towards the steps, and the two men descended to their horses. "That's likely enough. They ought to have sent you to me six months ago. Anyway, you must do your best." He climbed into the saddle, and Linforth did the same.

"Very well," said Dick, as they rode through the archway. "I will do my best," and he turned towards Ralston with a smile. "I'll do my best to hinder the Road from going on."

It was a queer piece of irony that the first real demand made upon him in his life was that he should stop the very thing on the accomplishment of which his hopes were set. But there was his friend to save. He comforted himself with that thought. There was his friend rushing blindly upon ruin. Linforth could not doubt it. How in the world could Shere Ali, he wondered. He could not yet dissociate the Shere Ali of to-day from the boy and the youth who had been his chum.

They passed out of the further gate of Peshawur and rode along the broad white road towards Government House. It was growing dark, and as they turned in at the gateway of the garden, lights shone in the windows ahead of them. The lights recalled to Ralston's mind a fact which he had forgotten to mention.

"By the way," he said, turning towards Linforth, "we have a lady staying with us who knows you."

Linforth leaned forward in his saddle and stooped as if to adjust a stirrup, and it was thus a second or two before he answered.

"Indeed!" he said. "Who is she?"

"A Mrs. Oliver," replied Ralston, "She was at Srinagar in Cashmere this summer, staying with the Resident. My sister met her there, I think she told Mrs. Oliver you were likely to come to us about this time."

Dick's heart leaped within him suddenly. Had Violet Oliver arranged her visit so that it might coincide with his? It was at all events a pleasant fancy to play with. He looked up at the windows of the house. She was really there! After all these months he would see her. No wonder the windows were bright. As they rode up to the porch and the door was opened, he heard her voice. She was singing in the drawing-room, and the door of the drawing-room stood open. She sang in a low small voice, very pretty to the ear, and she was accompanying herself softly on the piano. Dick stood for a while listening in the lofty hall, while Ralston looked over his letters which were lying upon a small table. He opened one of them and uttered an exclamation.

"This is from my man at Ajmere," he said, but Dick paid no attention. Ralston glanced through the letter.

"He has found him," he cried. "Shere Ali is in Ajmere."

It took a moment or two for the words to penetrate to Linforth's mind. Then he said slowly:

"Oh! Shere Ali's in Ajmere. I must start for Ajmere to-morrow."

Ralston looked up from his letters and glanced at Linforth. Something in the abstracted way in which Linforth had spoken attracted his attention. He smiled:

"Yes, it's a pity," he said. But again it seemed that Linforth did not hear. And then the voice at the piano stopped abruptly as though the singer had just become aware that there were people talking in the hall. Linforth moved forward, and in the doorway of the drawing-room he came face to face with Violet Oliver. Ralston smiled again.

"There's something between those two," he said to himself. But Linforth had kept his secrets better half an hour ago. For it did not occur to Ralston to suspect that there had been something also between Violet Oliver and Shere Ali.



CHAPTER XXV

IN THE ROSE GARDEN

"Let us go out," said Linforth.

It was after dinner on the same evening, and he was standing with Violet Oliver at the window of the drawing-room. Behind them an officer and his wife from the cantonment were playing "Bridge" with Ralston and his sister. Violet Oliver hesitated. The window opened upon the garden. Already Linforth's hand was on the knob.

"Very well," she said. But there was a note of reluctance in her voice.

"You will need a cloak," he said.

"No," said Violet Oliver. She had a scarf of lace in her hand, and she twisted it about her throat. Linforth opened the long window and they stepped out into the garden. It was a clear night of bright stars. The chill of sunset had passed, the air was warm. It was dark in spite of the stars. The path glimmered faintly in front of them.

"I was hoping very much that I should meet you somewhere in India," said Dick. "Lately I had grown afraid that you would be going home before the chance came."

"You left it to chance," said Violet.

The reluctance had gone from her voice; but in its place there was audible a note of resentment. She had spoken abruptly and a little sharply, as though a grievance present in her mind had caught her unawares and forced her to give it utterance.

"No," replied Linforth, turning to her earnestly. "That's not fair. I did not know where you were. I asked all who might be likely to know. No one could tell me. I could not get away from my station. So that I had to leave it to chance."

They walked down the drive, and then turned off past the croquet lawn towards a garden of roses and jasmine and chrysanthemums.

"And chance, after all, has been my friend," he said with a smile.

Violet Oliver stopped suddenly. Linforth turned to her. They were walking along a narrow path between high bushes of rhododendrons. It was very dark, so that Linforth could only see dimly her face and eyes framed in the white scarf which she had draped over her hair. But even so he could see that she was very grave.

"I was wondering whether I should tell you," she said quietly. "It was not chance which brought me here—which brought us together again."

Dick came to her side.

"No?" he asked, looking down into her face. He spoke very gently, and with a graver voice than he had used before.

"No," she answered. Her eyes were raised to his frankly and simply. "I heard that you were to be here. I came on that account. I wanted to see you again."

As she finished she walked forward again, and again Linforth walked at her side. Dick, though his settled aim had given to him a manner and an aspect beyond his age, was for the same reason younger than his years in other ways. Very early in his youth he had come by a great and definite ambition, he had been inspired by it, he had welcomed and clung to it with the simplicity and whole-heartedness which are of the essence of youth. It was always new to him, however long he pondered over it; his joy in it was always fresh. He had never doubted either the true gold of the thing he desired, or his capacity ultimately to attain it. But he had ordered his life towards its attainment with the method of a far older man, examining each opportunity which came his way with always the one question in his mind—"Does it help?"—and leaving or using that opportunity according to the answer. Youth, however, was the truth of him. The inspiration, the freshness, the simplicity of outlook—these were the dominating elements in his character, and they were altogether compact of youth. He looked upon the world with expectant eyes and an unfaltering faith. Nor did he go about to detect intrigues in men or deceits in women. Violet's words therefore moved him not merely to tenderness, but to self-reproach.

"It is very kind of you to say that," he said, and he turned to her suddenly. "Because you mean it."

"It is true," said Violet simply; and the next moment she was aware that someone very young was standing before her in that Indian garden beneath the starlit sky and faltering out statements as to his unworthiness. The statements were familiar to her ears, but there was this which was unfamiliar: they stirred her to passion.

She stepped back, throwing out a hand as if to keep him from her.

"Don't," she whispered. "Don't!"

She spoke like one who is hurt. Amongst the feelings which had waked in her, dim and for the most part hardly understood, two at all events were clear. One a vague longing for something different from the banal path she daily trod, the other a poignant regret that she was as she was.

But Linforth caught the hand which she held out to thrust him off, and, clasping it, drew her towards him.

"I love you," he said; and she answered him in desperation:

"But you don't know me."

"I know that I want you. I know that I am not fit for you."

And Violet Oliver laughed harshly.

But Dick Linforth paid no attention to that laugh. His hesitation had gone. He found that for this occasion only he had the gift of tongues. There was nothing new and original in what he said. But, on the other hand, he said it over and over again, and the look upon his face and the tone of his voice were the things which mattered. At the opera it is the singer you listen to, and not the words of the song. So in this rose garden Violet Oliver listened to Dick Linforth rather than to what he said. There was audible in his voice from sentence to sentence, ringing through them, inspiring them, the reverence a young man's heart holds for the woman whom he loves.

"You ought to marry, not me, but someone better," she cried. "There is someone I know—in—England—who—"

But Linforth would not listen. He laughed to scorn the notion that there could be anyone better than Violet Oliver; and with each word he spoke he seemed to grow younger. It was as though a miracle had happened. He remained in her eyes what he really was, a man head and shoulders above her friends, and in fibre altogether different. Yet to her, and for her, he was young, and younger than the youngest. In spite of herself, the longing at her heart cried with a louder voice. She sought to stifle it.

"There is the Road," she cried. "That is first with you. That is what you really care for."

"No," he replied quietly. She had hoped to take him at a disadvantage. But he replied at once:

"No. I have thought that out. I do not separate you from the Road. I put neither first. It is true that there was a time when the Road was everything to me. But that was before I met you—do you remember?—in the inn at La Grave."

Violet Oliver looked curiously at Linforth—curiously, and rather quickly. But it seemed that he at all events did not remember that he had not come alone down to La Grave.

"It isn't that I have come to care less for the Road," he went on. "Not by one jot. Rather, indeed, I care more. But I can't dissociate you from the Road. The Road's my life-work; but it will be the better done if it's done with your help. It will be done best of all if it's done for you."

Violet Oliver turned away quickly, and stood with her head averted. Ardently she longed to take him at his word. A glimpse of a great life was vouchsafed to her, such as she had not dreamt of. That some time she would marry again, she had not doubted. But always she had thought of her husband to be, as a man very rich, with no ambition but to please her, no work to do which would thwart her. And here was another life offered, a life upon a higher, a more difficult plane; but a life much more worth living. That she saw clearly enough. But out of her self-knowledge sprang the insistent question:

"Could I live it?"

There would be sacrifices to be made by her. Could she make them? Would not dissatisfaction with herself follow very quickly upon her marriage? Out of her dissatisfaction would there not grow disappointment in her husband? Would not bitterness spring up between them and both their lives be marred?

Dick was still holding her hand.

"Let me see you," he said, drawing her towards him. "Let me see your face!"

She turned and showed it. There was a great trouble in her eyes, her voice was piteous as she spoke.

"Dick, I can't answer you. When I told you that I came here on purpose to meet you, that I wanted to see you again, it was true, all true. But oh, Dick, did I mean more?"

"How should I know?" said Dick, with a quiet laugh—a laugh of happiness.

"I suppose that I did. I wanted you to say just what you have said to-night. Yet now that you have said it—" she broke off with a cry. "Dick, I have met no one like you in my life. And I am very proud. Oh, Dick, my boy!" And she gave him her other hand. Tears glistened in her eyes.

"But I am not sure," she went on. "Now that you have spoken, I am not sure. It would be all so different from what my life has been, from what I thought it would be. Dick, you make me ashamed."

"Hush!" he said gently, as one might chide a child for talking nonsense. He put an arm about her, and she hid her face in his coat.

"Yes, that's the truth, Dick. You make me ashamed."

So she remained for a little while, and then she drew herself away.

"I will think and tell you, Dick," she said.

"Tell me now!"

"No, not yet. It's all your life and my life, you know, Dick. Give me a little while."

"I go away to-morrow."

"To-morrow?" she cried.

"Yes, I go to Ajmere. I go to find my friend. I must go."

Violet started. Into her eyes there crept a look of fear, and she was silent.

"The Prince?" she asked with a queer suspense in her voice.

"Yes—Shere Ali," and Dick became perceptibly embarrassed. "He is not as friendly to us as he used to be. There is some trouble," he said lamely.

Violet looked him frankly in the face. It was not her habit to flinch. She read and understood his embarrassment. Yet her eyes met his quite steadily.

"I am afraid that I am the trouble," she said quietly.

Dick did not deny the truth of what she said. On the other hand, he had as yet no thought or word of blame for her. There was more for her to tell. He waited to hear it.

"I tried to avoid him here in India, as I told you I meant to do," she said. "I thought he was safe in Chiltistan. I did not let him know that I was coming out. I did not write to him after I had landed. But he came down to Agra—and we met. There he asked me to marry him."

"He asked you!" cried Linforth. "He must have been mad to think that such a thing was possible."

"He was very unhappy," Violet Oliver explained. "I told him that it was impossible. But he would not see. I am afraid that is the cause of his unfriendliness."

"Yes," said Dick. Then he was silent for a little while.

"But you are not to blame," he added at length, in a quiet but decisive voice; and he turned as though the subject were now closed.

But Violet was not content. She stayed him with a gesture. She was driven that night to speak out all the truth. Certainly he deserved that she should make no concealment. Moreover, the truth would put him to the test, would show to her how deep his passion ran. It might change his thoughts towards her, and so she would escape by the easiest way the difficult problem she had to solve. And the easiest way was the way which Violet Oliver always chose to take.

"I am to blame," she said. "I took jewels from him in London. Yes." She saw Dick standing in front of her, silent and with a face quite inscrutable, and she lowered her head and spoke with the submission of a penitent to her judge. "He offered me jewels. I love them," and she spread out her hands. "Yes, I cannot help it. I am a foolish lover of beautiful things. I took them. I made no promises, he asked for none. There were no conditions, he stipulated for none. He just offered me the pearls, and I took them. But very likely he thought that my taking them meant more than it did."

"And where are they now?" asked Dick.

She was silent for a perceptible time. Then she said:

"I sent them back." She heard Dick draw a breath of relief, and she went on quickly, as though she had been in doubt what she should say and now was sure. "The same night—after he had asked me to marry him—I packed them up and sent them to him."

"He has them now, then?" asked Linforth.

"I don't know. I sent them to Kohara. I did not know in what camp he was staying. I thought it likely he would go home at once."

"Yes," said Dick.

They turned and walked back towards the house. Dick did not speak. Violet was afraid. She walked by his side, stealing every now and then a look at his set face. It was dark; she could see little but the profile. But she imagined it very stern, and she was afraid. She regretted now that she had spoken. She felt now that she could not lose him.

"Dick," she whispered timidly, laying a hand upon his arm; but he made no answer. The lighted windows of the house blazed upon the night. Would he reach the door, pass in and be gone the next morning without another word to her except a formal goodnight in front of the others?

"Oh, Dick," she said again, entreatingly; and at that reiteration of his name he stopped.

"I am very sorry," he said gently. "But I know quite well—others have taken presents from these princes. It is a pity.... One rather hates it. But you sent yours back," and he turned to her with a smile. "The others have not always done as much. Yes, you sent yours back."

Violet Oliver drew a breath of relief. She raised her face towards his. She spoke with pleading lips.

"I am forgiven then?"

"Hush!"

And in a moment she was in his arms. Passion swept her away. It seemed to her that new worlds were opening before her eyes. There were heights to walk upon for her—even for her who had never dreamed that she would even see them near. Their lips touched.

"Oh, Dick," she murmured. Her hands were clasped about his neck. She hid her face against his coat, and when he would raise it she would not suffer him. But in a little while she drew herself apart, and, holding his hands, looked at him with a great pride.

"My Dick," she said, and she laughed—a low sweet laugh of happiness which thrilled to the heart of her lover.

"I'll tell you something," she said. "When I said good-bye to him—to the Prince—he asked me if I was going to marry you."

"And you answered?"

"That you hadn't asked me."

"Now I have. Violet!" he whispered.

But now she held him off, and suddenly her face grew serious.

"Dick, I will tell you something," she said, "now, so that I may never tell you it again. Remember it, Dick! For both our sakes remember it!"

"Well?" he asked. "What is it?"

"Don't forgive so easily," she said very gravely, "when we both know that there is something real to be forgiven." She let go of his hands before he could answer, and ran from him up the steps into the house. Linforth saw no more of her that night.



CHAPTER XXVI

THE BREAKING OF THE PITCHER

It is a far cry from Peshawur to Ajmere, and Linforth travelled in the train for two nights and the greater part of two days before he came to it. A little State carved out of Rajputana and settled under English rule, it is the place of all places where East and West come nearest to meeting. Within the walls of the city the great Dargah Mosque, with its shrine of pilgrimage and its ancient rites, lies close against the foot of the Taragarh Hill. Behind it the mass of the mountain rises steeply to its white crown of fortress walls. In front, its high bright-blue archway, a thing of cupolas and porticoes, faces the narrow street of the grain-sellers and the locksmiths. Here is the East, with its memories of Akbar and Shah Jehan, its fiery superstitions and its crudities of decoration. Gaudy chandeliers of coloured glass hang from the roof of a marble mosque, and though the marble may crack and no one give heed to it, the glass chandeliers will be carefully swathed in holland bags. Here is the East, but outside the city walls the pile of Mayo College rises high above its playing-grounds and gives to the princes and the chiefs of Rajputana a modern public school for the education of their sons.

From the roof top of the college tower Linforth looked to the city huddled under the Taragarh Hill, and dimly made out the high archway of the mosque. He turned back to the broad playing-fields at his feet where a cricket match was going on. There was the true solution of the great problem, he thought.

"Here at Ajmere," he said to himself, "Shere Ali could have learned what the West had to teach him. Had he come here he would have been spared the disappointments, and the disillusions. He would not have fallen in with Violet Oliver. He would have married and ruled in his own country."

As it was, he had gone instead to Eton and to Oxford, and Linforth must needs search for him over there in the huddled city under the Taragarh Hill. Ralston's Pathan was even then waiting for Linforth at the bottom of the tower.

"Sir," he said, making a low salaam when Linforth had descended, "His Highness Shere Ali is now in Ajmere. Every morning between ten and eleven he is to be found in a balcony above the well at the back of the Dargah Mosque, and to-morrow I will lead you to him."

"Every morning!" said Linforth. "What does he do upon this balcony?"

"He watches the well below, and the water-carriers descending with their jars," said the Pathan, "and he talks with his friends. That is all."

"Very well," said Linforth. "To-morrow we will go to him."

He passed up the steps under the blue portico a little before the hour on the next morning, and entered a stone-flagged court which was thronged with pilgrims. On each side of the archway a great copper vat was raised upon stone steps, and it was about these two vats that the crowd thronged. Linforth and his guide could hardly force their way through. On the steps of the vats natives, wrapped to the eyes in cloths to save themselves from burns, stood emptying the caldrons of boiling ghee. And on every side Linforth heard the name of Shere Ali spoken in praise.

"What does it mean?" he asked of his guide, and the Pathan replied:

"His Highness the Prince has made an offering. He has filled those caldrons with rice and butter and spices, as pilgrims of great position and honour sometimes do. The rice is cooked in the vats, and so many jars are set aside for the strangers, while the people of Indrakot have hereditary rights to what is left. Sir, it is an act of great piety to make so rich an offering."

Linforth looked at the swathed men scrambling, with cries of pain, for the burning rice. He remembered how lightly Shere Ali had been wont to speak of the superstitions of the Mohammedans and in what contempt he held the Mullahs of his country. Not in those days would he have celebrated his pilgrimage to the shrine of Khwajah Mueeyinudin Chisti by a public offering of ghee.

Linforth looked back upon the Indrakotis struggling and scrambling and burning themselves on the steps about the vast caldrons, and the crowd waiting and clamouring below. It was a scene grotesque enough in all conscience, but Linforth was never further from smiling than at this moment. A strong intuition made him grave.

"Does this mark Shere Ali's return to the ways of his fathers?" he asked himself. "Is this his renunciation of the White People?"

He moved forward slowly towards the inner archway, and the Pathan at his side gave a new turn to his thoughts.

"Sir, that will be talked of for many months," the Pathan said. "The Prince will gain many friends who up till now distrust him."

"It will be taken as a sign of faith?" asked Linforth.

"And more than that," said the guide significantly. "This one thing done here in Ajmere to-day will be spread abroad through Chiltistan and beyond."

Linforth looked more closely at the crowd. Yes, there were many men there from the hills beyond the Frontier to carry the news of Shere Ali's munificence to their homes.

"It costs a thousand rupees at the least to fill one of those caldrons," said the Pathan. "In truth, his Highness has done a wise thing if—" And he left the sentence unfinished.

But Linforth could fill in the gap.

"If he means to make trouble."

But he did not utter the explanation aloud.

"Let us go in," he said; and they passed through the high inner archway into the great court where the saint's tomb, gilded and decked out with canopies and marble, stands in the middle.

"Follow me closely," said the Pathan. "There may be bad men. Watch any who approach you, and should one spit, I beseech your Excellency to pay no heed."

The huge paved square, indeed, was thronged like a bazaar. Along the wall on the left hand booths were erected, where food and sweetmeats were being sold. Stone tombs dotted the enclosure; and amongst them men walked up and down, shouting and talking. Here and there big mango and peepul trees threw a welcome shade.

The Pathan led Linforth to the right between the Chisti's tomb and the raised marble court surrounded by its marble balustrade in front of the long mosque of Shah Jehan. Behind the tomb there were more trees, and the shrine of a dancing saint, before which dancers from Chitral were moving in and out with quick and flying steps. The Pathan led Linforth quickly through the groups, and though here and there a man stood in their way and screamed insults, and here and there one walked along beside them with a scowling face and muttered threats, no one molested them.

The Pathan turned to the right, mounted a few steps, and passed under a low stone archway. Linforth found himself upon a balcony overhanging a great ditch between the Dargah and Taragarh Hill. He leaned forward over the balustrade, and from every direction, opposite to him, below him, and at the ends, steps ran down to the bottom of the gulf—twisting and turning at every sort of angle, now in long lines, now narrow as a stair. The place had the look of some ancient amphitheatre. And at the bottom, and a little to the right of the balcony, was the mouth of an open spring.

"The Prince is here, your Excellency."

Linforth looked along the balcony. There were only three men standing there, in white robes, with white turbans upon their heads. The turban of one was hemmed with gold. There was gold, too, upon his robe.

"No," said Linforth. "He has not yet come," and even as he turned again to look down into that strange gulf of steps the man with the gold-hemmed turban changed his attitude and showed Linforth the profile of his face.

Linforth was startled.

"Is that the Prince?" he exclaimed. He saw a man, young to be sure, but older than Shere Ali, and surely taller too. He looked more closely. That small carefully trimmed black beard might give the look of age, the long robe add to his height. Yes, it was Shere Ali. Linforth walked along the balcony, and as he approached, Shere Ali turned quickly towards him. The blood rushed into his dark face; he stood staring at Linforth like a man transfixed.

Linforth held out his hand with a smile.

"I hardly knew you again," he said.

Shere Ali did not take the hand outstretched to him; he did not move; neither did he speak. He just stood with his eyes fixed upon Linforth. But there was recognition in his eyes, and there was something more. Linforth recalled something that Violet Oliver had told to him in the garden at Peshawur—"Are you going to marry Linforth?" That had been Shere Ali's last question when he had parted from her upon the steps of the courtyard of the Fort. Linforth remembered it now as he looked into Shere Ali's face. "Here is a man who hates me," he said to himself. And thus, for the first time since they had dined together in the mess-room at Chatham, the two friends met.

"Surely you have not forgotten me, Shere Ali?" said Linforth, trying to force his voice in to a note of cheery friendliness. But the attempt was not very successful. The look of hatred upon Shere Ali's face had died away, it is true. But mere impassivity had replaced it. He had aged greatly during those months. Linforth recognised that clearly now. His face was haggard, his eyes sunken. He was a man, moreover. He had been little more than a boy when he had dined with Linforth in the mess-room at Chatham.

"After all," Linforth continued, and his voice now really had something of genuine friendliness, for he understood that Shere Ali had suffered—had suffered deeply; and he was inclined to forgive his temerity in proposing marriage to Violet Oliver—"after all, it is not so much more than a year ago when we last talked together of our plans."

Shere Ali turned to the younger of the two who stood beside him and spoke a few words in a tongue which Linforth did not yet understand. The youth—he was a youth with a soft pleasant voice, a graceful manner and something of the exquisite in his person—stepped smoothly forward and repeated the words to Linforth's Pathan.

"What does he say?" asked Linforth impatiently. The Pathan translated:

"His Highness the Prince would be glad to know what your Excellency means by interrupting him."

Linforth flushed with anger. But he had his mission to fulfil, if it could be fulfilled.

"What's the use of making this pretence?" he said to Shere Ali. "You and I know one another well enough."

And as he ended, Shere Ali suddenly leaned over the balustrade of the balcony. His two companions followed the direction of his eyes; and both their faces became alert with some expectancy. For a moment Linforth imagined that Shere Ali was merely pretending to be absorbed in what he saw. But he, too, looked, and it grew upon him that here was some matter of importance—all three were watching in so eager a suspense.

Yet what they saw was a common enough sight in Ajmere, or in any other town of India. The balcony was built out from a brick wall which fell sheer to the bottom of the foss. But at some little distance from the end of the balcony and at the head of the foss, a road from the town broke the wall, and a flight of steep steps descended to the spring. The steps descended along the wall first of all towards the balcony, and then just below the end of it they turned, so that any man going down to the well would have his face towards the people on the balcony for half the descent and his back towards them during the second half.

A water-carrier with an earthen jar upon his head had appeared at the top of the steps a second before Shere Ali had turned so abruptly away from Linforth. It was this man whom the three were watching. Slowly he descended. The steps were high and worn, smooth and slippery. He went down with his left hand against the wall, and the lizards basking in the sunlight scuttled into their crevices as he approached. On his right hand the ground fell in a precipice to the bottom of the gulf. The three men watched him, and, it seemed to Linforth, with a growing excitement as he neared the turn of the steps. It was almost as though they waited for him to slip just at that turn, where a slip was most likely to occur.

Linforth laughed at the thought, but the thought suddenly gained strength, nay, conviction in his mind. For as the water-carrier reached the bend, turned in safety and went down towards the well, there was a simultaneous movement made by the three—a movement of disappointment. Shere Ali did more than merely move. He struck his hand upon the balustrade and spoke impatiently. But he did not finish the sentence, for one of his companions looked significantly towards Linforth and his Pathan. Linforth stepped forward again.

"Shere Ali," he said, "I want to speak to you. It is important that I should."

Shere Ali leaned his elbows on the balustrade, and gazing across the foss to the Taragarh Hill, hummed to himself a tune.

"Have you forgotten everything?" Linforth went on. He found it difficult to say what was in his mind. He seemed to be speaking to a stranger—so great a gulf was between them now—a gulf as wide, as impassable, as this one at his feet between the balcony and the Taragarh Hill. "Have you forgotten that night when we sat in the doorway of the hut under the Aiguilles d'Arve? I remember it very clearly. You said to me, of your own accord, 'We will always be friends. No man, no woman, shall come between us. We will work together and we will always be friends.'"

By not so much as the flicker of an eyelid did Shere Ali betray that he heard the words. Linforth sought to revive that night so vividly that he needs must turn, needs must respond to the call, and needs must renew the pledge.

"We sat for a long while that night, smoking our pipes on the step of the door. It was a dark night. We watched a planet throw its light upwards from behind the amphitheatre of hills on the left, and then rise clear to view in a gap. There was a smell of hay, like an English meadow, from the hut behind us. You pledged your friendship that night. It's not so very long ago—two years, that's all."

He came to a stop with a queer feeling of shame. He remembered the night himself, and always had remembered it. But he was not given to sentiment, and here he had been talking sentiment and to no purpose.

Shere Ali spoke again to his courtier, and the courtier stepped forward more bland than ever.

"His Highness would like to know if his Excellency is still talking, and if so, why?" he said to the Pathan, who translated it.

Linforth gave up the attempt to renew his friendship with Shere Ali. He must go back to Peshawur and tell Ralston that he had failed. Ralston would merely shrug his shoulders and express neither disappointment nor surprise. But it was a moment of bitterness to Linforth. He looked at Shere Ali's indifferent face, he listened for a second or two to the tune he still hummed, and he turned away. But he had not taken more than a couple of steps towards the entrance of the balcony when his guide touched him cautiously upon the elbow.

Linforth stopped and looked back. The three men were once more gazing at the steps which led down from the road to the well. And once more a water-carrier descended with his great earthen jar upon his head. He descended very cautiously, but as he came to the turn of the steps his foot slipped suddenly.

Linforth uttered a cry, but the man had not fallen. He had tottered for a moment, then he had recovered himself. But the earthen jar which he carried on his head had fallen and been smashed to atoms.

Again the three made a simultaneous movement, but this time it was a movement of joy. Again an exclamation burst from Shere Ali's lips, but now it was a cry of triumph.

He stood erect, and at once he turned to go. As he turned he met Linforth's gaze. All expression died out of his face, but he spoke to his young courtier, who fluttered forward sniggering with amusement.

"His Highness would like to know if his Excellency is interested in a Road. His Highness thinks it a damn-fool road. His Highness much regrets that he cannot even let it go beyond Kohara. His Highness wishes his Excellency good-morning."

Linforth made no answer to the gibe. He passed out into the courtyard, and from the courtyard through the archway into the grain-market. Opposite to him at the end of the street, a grass hill, with the chalk showing at one bare spot on the side of it, ridged up against the sky curiously like a fragment of the Sussex Downs. Linforth wondered whether Shere Ali had ever noticed the resemblance, and whether some recollection of the summer which he had spent at Poynings had ever struck poignantly home as he had stood upon these steps. Or were all these memories quite dead within his breast?

In one respect Shere Ali was wrong. The Road would go on—now. Linforth had done his best to hinder it, as Ralston had bidden him to do, but he had failed, and the Road would go on to the foot of the Hindu Kush. Old Andrew Linforth's words came back to his mind:

"Governments will try to stop it; but the power of the Road will be greater than the power of any Government. It will wind through valleys so deep that the day's sunshine is gone within the hour. It will be carried in galleries along the faces of the mountains, and for eight months of the year sections of it will be buried deep in snow. Yet it will be finished."

How rightly Andrew Linforth had judged! But Dick for once felt no joy in the accuracy of the old man's forecast. He walked back through the city silent and with a heavy heart. He had counted more than he had thought upon Shere Ali's co-operation. His friendship for Shere Ali had grown into a greater and a deeper force than he had ever imagined it until this moment to be. He stopped with a sense of weariness and disillusionment, and then walked on again. The Road would never again be quite the bright, inspiring thing which it had been. The dream had a shadow upon it. In the Eton and Oxford days he had given and given and given so much of himself to Shere Ali that he could not now lightly and easily lose him altogether out of his life. Yet he must so lose him, and even then that was not all the truth. For they would be enemies, Shere Ali would be ruined and cast out, and his ruin would be the opportunity of the Road.

He turned quickly to his companion.

"What was it that the Prince said," he asked, "when the first of those water-carriers came down the steps and did not slip? He beat his hands upon the balustrade of the balcony and cried out some words. It seemed to me that his companion warned him of your presence, and that he stopped with the sentence half spoken."

"That is the truth," Linforth's guide replied. "The Prince cried out in anger, 'How long must we wait?'"

Linforth nodded his head.

"He looked for the pitcher to fall and it did not fall," he said. "The breaking of the pitcher was to be a sign."

"And the sign was given. Do not forget that, your Excellency. The sign was given."

But what did the sign portend? Linforth puzzled his brains vainly over that problem. He had not the knowledge by which a man might cipher out the intrigues of the hill-folk beyond the Frontier. Did the breaking of the pitcher mean that some definite thing had been done in Chiltistan, some breaking of the British power? They might look upon the Raj as a heavy burden on their heads, like an earthen pitcher and as easily broken. Ralston would know.

"You must travel back to Peshawur to-night," said Linforth. "Go straight to his Excellency the Chief Commissioner and tell him all that you saw upon the balcony and all that you heard. If any man can interpret it, it will be he. Meanwhile, show me where the Prince Shere Ali lodges in Ajmere."

The policeman led Linforth to a tall house which closed in at one end a short and narrow street.

"It is here," he said.

"Very well," said Linforth, "I will seek out the Prince again. I will stay in Ajmere and try by some way or another to have talk with him."

But again Linforth was to fail. He stayed for some days in Ajmere, but could never gain admittance to the house. He was put off with the politest of excuses, delivered with every appearance of deep regret. Now his Highness was unwell and could see no one but his physician. At another time he was better—so much better, indeed, that he was giving thanks to Allah for the restoration of his health in the Mosque of Shah Jehan. Linforth could not reach him, nor did he ever see him in the streets of Ajmere.

He stayed for a week, and then coming to the house one morning he found it shuttered. He knocked upon the door, but no one answered his summons; all the reply he got was the melancholy echo of an empty house.

A Babu from the Customs Office, who was passing at the moment, stopped and volunteered information.

"There is no one there, Mister," he said gravely. "All have skedaddled to other places."

"The Prince Shere Ali, too?" asked Linforth.

The Babu laughed contemptuously at the title.

"Oho, the Prince! The Prince went away a week ago."

Linforth turned in surprise.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

The Babu told him the very day on which Shere Ali had gone from Ajmere. It was on the day when the pitcher had fallen on the steps which led down to the well. Linforth had been tricked by the smiling courtier like any schoolboy.

"Whither did the Prince go?"

The Babu shrugged his shoulders.

"How should I know? They are not of my people, these poor ignorant hill-folk."

He went on his way. Linforth was left with the assurance that now, indeed, he had really failed. He took the train that night back to Peshawur.



CHAPTER XXVII

AN ARRESTED CONFESSION

Linforth related the history of his failure to Ralston in the office at Peshawur.

"Shere Ali went away on the day the pitcher was broken," he said. "It was the breaking of the pitcher which gave him the notice to go; I am sure of it. If one only knew what message was conveyed—" and Ralston handed to him a letter.

The letter had been sent by the Resident at Kohara and had only this day reached Peshawur. Linforth took it and read it through. It announced that the son of Abdulla Mahommed had been murdered.

"You see?" said Ralston. "He was shot in the back by one of his attendants when he was out after Markhor. He was the leader of the rival faction, and was bidding for the throne against Shere Ali. His murder clears the way. I have no doubt your friend is over the Lowari Pass by this time. There will be trouble in Chiltistan. I would have stopped Shere Ali on his way up had I known."

"But you don't think Shere Ali had this man murdered!" cried Linforth.

Ralston shrugged his shoulders.

"Why not? What else was he waiting for from ten to eleven in the balcony above the well, except just for this news?"

He stopped for a moment, and went on again in a voice which was very grave.

"That seems to you horrible. I am very much afraid that another thing, another murder much more horrible, will be announced down to me in the next few days. The son of Abdulla Mahommed stood in Shere Ali's way a week ago and he is gone. But the way is still not clear. There's still another in his path."

Linforth interpreted the words according to the gravity with which they were uttered.

"His father!" he said, and Ralston nodded his head.

"What can we do?" he cried. "We can threaten—but what is the use of threatening without troops? And we mayn't use troops. Chiltistan is an independent kingdom. We can advise, but we can't force them to follow our advice. We accept the status quo. That's the policy. So long as Chiltistan keeps the peace with us we accept Chiltistan as it is and as it may be. We can protect if our protection is asked. But our protection has not been asked. Why has Shere Ali fled so quickly back to his country? Tell me that if you can."

None the less, however, Ralston telegraphed at once to the authorities at Lahore. Linforth, though he had failed to renew his old comradeship with Shere Ali, had not altogether failed. He had brought back news which Ralston counted as of great importance. He had linked up the murder in Chiltistan with the intrigues of Shere Ali. That the glare was rapidly broadening over that country of hills and orchards Ralston was very well aware. But it was evident now that at any moment the eruption might take place, and fire pour down the hills. In these terms he telegraphed to Lahore. Quietly and quickly, once more after twenty-five years, troops were being concentrated at Nowshera for a rush over the passes into Chiltistan. But even so Ralston was urgent that the concentration should be hurried.

He sent a letter in cipher to the Resident at Kohara, bidding him to expect Shere Ali, and with Shere Ali the beginning of the trouble.

He could do no more for the moment. So far as he could see he had taken all the precautions which were possible. But that night an event occurred in his own house which led him to believe that he had not understood the whole extent of the danger.

It was Mrs. Oliver who first aroused his suspicions. The four of them—Ralston and his sister, Linforth and Violet Oliver were sitting quietly at dinner when Violet suddenly said:

"It's a strange thing. Of course there's nothing really in it, and I am not at all frightened, but the last two nights, on going to bed, I have found that one of my windows was no longer bolted."

Linforth looked up in alarm. Ralston's face, however, did not change.

"Are you sure that it was bolted before?"

"Yes, quite sure," said Violet. "The room is on the ground floor, and outside one of the windows a flight of steps leads down from the verandah to the ground. So I have always taken care to bolt them myself."

"When?" asked Ralston.

"After dressing for dinner," she replied. "It is the last thing I do before leaving the room."

Ralston leaned back in his chair, as though a momentary anxiety were quite relieved.

"It is one of the servants, no doubt," he said. "I will speak about it afterwards"; and for the moment the matter dropped.

But Ralston returned to the subject before dinner was finished.

"I don't think you need be uneasy, Mrs. Oliver," he said. "The house is guarded by sentinels, as no doubt you know. They are native levies, of course, but they are quite reliable"; and in this he was quite sincere. So long as they wore the uniform they would be loyal. The time might come when they would ask to be allowed to go home. That permission would be granted, and it was possible that they would be found in arms against the loyal troops immediately afterwards. But they would ask to be allowed to go first.

"Still," he resumed, "if you carry valuable jewellery about with you, it would be as well, I think, if you locked it up."

"I have very little jewellery, and that not valuable," said Violet, and suddenly her face flushed and she looked across the table at Linforth with a smile. The smile was returned, and a minute later the ladies rose.

The two men were left alone to smoke.

"You know Mrs. Oliver better than I do," said Ralston. "I will tell you frankly what I think. It may be a mere nothing. There may be no cause for anxiety at all. In any case anxiety is not the word" he corrected himself, and went on. "There is a perfectly natural explanation. The servants may have opened the window to air the room when they were preparing it for the night, and may easily have forgotten to latch the bolt afterwards."

"Yes, I suppose that is the natural explanation," said Linforth, as he lit a cigar. "It is hard to conceive any other."

"Theft," replied Ralston, "is the other explanation. What I said about the levies is true. I can rely on them. But the servants—that is perhaps a different question. They are Mahommedans all of them, and we hear a good deal about the loyalty of Mahommedans, don't we?" he said, with a smile. "They wear, if not a uniform, a livery. All these things are true. But I tell you this, which is no less true. Not one of those Mahommedan servants would die wearing the livery, acknowledging their service. Every one of them, if he fell ill, if he thought that he was going to die, would leave my service to-morrow. So I don't count on them so much. However, I will make some inquiries, and to-morrow we will move Mrs. Oliver to another room."

He went about the business forthwith, and cross-examined his servants one after another. But he obtained no admission from any one of them. No one had touched the window. Was a single thing missing of all that the honourable lady possessed? On their lives, no!

Meanwhile Linforth sought out Violet Oliver in the drawing-room. He found her alone, and she came eagerly towards him and took his hands.

"Oh, Dick," she said, "I am glad you have come back. I am nervous."

"There's no need," said Dick with a laugh. "Let us go out."

He opened the window, but Violet drew back.

"No, let us stay here," she said, and passing her arm through his she stared for a few moments with a singular intentness into the darkness of the garden.

"Did you see anything?" he asked.

"No," she replied, and he felt the tension of her body relax. "No, there's nothing. And since you have come back, Dick, I am no longer afraid." She looked up at him with a smile, and tightened her clasp upon his arm with a pretty air of ownership. "My Dick!" she said, and laughed.

The door-handle rattled, and Violet proved that she had lost her fear.

"That's Miss Ralston," she said. "Let us go out," and she slipped out of the window quickly. As quickly Linforth followed her. She was waiting for him in the darkness.

"Dick," she said in a whisper, and she caught him close to her.

"Violet."

He looked up to the dark, clear, starlit sky and down to the sweet and gentle face held up towards his. That night and in this Indian garden, it seemed to him that his faith was proven and made good. With the sense of failure heavy upon his soul, he yet found here a woman whose trust was not diminished by any failure, who still looked to him with confidence and drew comfort and strength from his presence, even as he did from hers. Alone in the drawing-room she had been afraid; outside here in the garden she had no fear, and no room in her mind for any thought of fear.

"When you spoke about your window to-night, Violet," he said gently, "although I was alarmed for you, although I was troubled that you should have cause for alarm—"

"I saw that," said Violet with a smile.

"Yet I never spoke."

"Your eyes, your face spoke. Oh, my dear, I watch you," and she drew in a breath. "I am a little afraid of you." She did not laugh. There was nothing provocative in her accent. She spoke with simplicity and truth, now as often, what was set down to her for a coquetry by those who disliked her. Linforth was in no doubt, however. Mistake her as he did, he judged her in this respect more truly than the worldly-wise. She had at the bottom of her heart a great fear of her lover, a fear that she might lose him, a fear that he might hold her in scorn, if he knew her only half as well as she knew herself.

"I don't want you to be afraid of me," he said, quietly. "There is no reason for it."

"You are hard to others if they come in your way," she replied, and Linforth stopped. Yes, that was true. There was his mother in the house under the Sussex Downs. He had got his way. He was on the Frontier. The Road now would surely go on. It would be a strange thing if he did not manage to get some portion of that work entrusted to his hands. He had got his way, but he had been hard, undoubtedly.

"It is quite true," he answered. "But I have had my lesson. You need not fear that I shall be anything but very gentle towards you."

"In your thoughts?" she asked quickly. "That you will be gentle in word and in deed—yes, of that I am sure. But will you think gently of me—always? That is a different thing."

"Of course," he answered with a laugh.

But Violet Oliver was in no mood lightly to be put off.

"Promise me that!" she cried in a low and most passionate voice. Her lips trembled as she pleaded; her dark eyes besought him, shining starrily. "Oh, promise that you will think of me gently—that if ever you are inclined to be hard and to judge me harshly, you will remember these two nights in the dark garden at Peshawur."

"I shall not forget them," said Linforth, and there was no longer any levity in his tones. He spoke gravely, and more than gravely. There was a note of anxiety, as though he were troubled.

"I promise," he said.

"Thank you," said Violet simply; "for I know that you will keep the promise."

"Yes, but you speak"—and the note of trouble was still more audible in Linforth's voice—"you speak as if you and I were going to part to-morrow morning for the rest of our lives."

"No," Violet cried quickly and rather sharply. Then she moved on a step or two.

"I interrupted you," she said. "You were saying that when I spoke about my window, although you were troubled on my account—"

"I felt at the same time some relief," Linforth continued.

"Relief?" she asked.

"Yes; for on my return from Ajmere this morning I noticed a change in you." He felt at once Violet's hand shake upon his arm as she started; but she did not interrupt him by a word.

"I noticed it at once when we met for the first time since we had talked together in the garden, for the first time since your hands had lain in mine and your lips touched mine. And afterwards it was still there."

"What change?" Violet asked. But she asked the question in a stifled voice and with her face averted from him.

"There was a constraint, an embarrassment," he said. "How can I explain it? I felt it rather than noticed it by visible signs. It seemed to me that you avoided being alone with me. I had a dread that you regretted the evening in the garden, that you were sorry we had agreed to live our lives together."

Violet did not protest. She did not turn to him with any denial in her eyes. She walked on by his side with her face still turned away from his, and for a little while she walked in silence. Then, as if compelled, she suddenly stopped and turned. She spoke, too, as if compelled, with a kind of desperation in her voice.

"Yes, you were right," she cried. "Oh, Dick, you were right. There was constraint, there was embarrassment. I will tell you the reason—now."

"I know it," said Dick with a smile.

Violet stared at him for a moment. She perceived his contentment. He was now quite unharassed by fear. There was no disappointment, no anger against her. She shook her head and said slowly:

"You can't know it."

"I do."

"Tell me the reason then."

"You were frightened by this business of the window."

Violet made a movement. She was in the mood to contradict him. But he went on, and so the mood passed.

"It was only natural. Here were you in a frontier town, a wild town on the borders of a wild country. A window bolted at dinner-time and unlocked at bedtime—it was easy to find something sinister in that. You did not like to speak of it, lest it should trouble your hosts. Yet it weighed on you. It occupied your thoughts."

"And to that you put down my embarrassment?" she asked quietly. They had come again to the window of the drawing-room.

"Yes, I do," he answered.

She looked at him strangely for a few moments. But the compulsion which she had felt upon her a moment ago to speak was gone. She no longer sought to contradict him. Without a word she slipped into the drawing-room.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE THIEF

Violet Oliver was harassed that night as she had never before been harassed at any moment of her easy life. She fled to her room. She stood in front of her mirror gazing helplessly at the reflection of her troubled face.

"What shall I do?" she cried piteously. "What shall I do?"

And it was not until some minutes had passed that she gave a thought to whether her window on this night was bolted or not.

She moved quickly across the room and drew the curtains apart. This time the bolt was shot. But she did not turn back to her room. She let the curtains fall behind her and leaned her forehead against the glass. There was a moon to-night, and the quiet garden stretched in front of her a place of black shadows and white light. Whether a thief lurked in those shadows and watched from them she did not now consider. The rattle of a rifle from a sentry near at hand gave her confidence; and all her trouble lay in the house behind her.

She opened her window and stepped out. "I tried to speak, but he would not listen. Oh, why did I ever come here?" she cried. "It would have been so easy not to have come."

But even while she cried out her regrets, they were not all the truth. There was still alive within her the longing to follow the difficult way—the way of fire and stones, as it would be for her—if only she could! She had made a beginning that night. Yes, she had made a beginning though nothing had come of it. That was not her fault, she assured herself. She had tried to speak. But could she keep it up? She turned and twisted; she was caught in a trap. Passion had trapped her unawares.

She went back to the room and bolted the window. Then again she stood in front of her mirror and gazed at herself in thought.

Suddenly her face changed. She looked up; an idea took shape in her mind. "Theft," Ralston had said. Thus had he explained the unbolted window. She must lock up what jewels she had. She must be sure to do that. Violet Oliver looked towards the window and shivered. It was very silent in the room. Fear seized hold of her. It was a big room, and furtively she peered into the corners lest already hidden behind some curtain the thief should be there.

But always her eyes returned to the window. If she only dared! She ran to her trunks. From one of them she took out from its deep hiding-place a small jewel-case, a jewel-case very like to that one which a few months ago she had sealed up in her tent and addressed to Kohara. She left it on her dressing-table. She did not open it. Then she looked about her again. It would be the easy way—if only she dared! It would be an easier way than trying again to tell her lover what she would have told him to-night, had he only been willing to listen.

She stood and listened, with parted lips. It seemed to her that even in this lighted room people, unseen people, breathed about her. Then, with a little sob in her throat, she ran to the window and shot back the bolt. She undressed hurriedly, placed a candle by her bedside and turned out the electric lights. As soon as she was in bed she blew out the candle. She lay in the darkness, shivering with fear, regretting what she had done. Every now and then a board cracked in the corridor outside the room, as though beneath a stealthy footstep. And once inside the room the door of a wardrobe sprang open. She would have cried out, but terror paralysed her throat; and the next moment she heard the tread of the sentry outside her window. The sound reassured her. There was safety in the heavy regularity of the steps. It was a soldier who was passing, a drilled, trustworthy soldier. "Trustworthy" was the word which the Commissioner had used. And lulled by the soldier's presence in the garden Violet Oliver fell asleep.

But she waked before dawn. The room was still in darkness. The moon had sunk. Not a ray of light penetrated from behind the curtains. She lay for a little while in bed, listening, wondering whether that window had been opened. A queer longing came upon her—a longing to thrust back the curtains, so that—if anything happened—she might see. That would be better than lying here in the dark, knowing nothing, seeing nothing, fearing everything. If she pulled back the curtains, there would be a panel of dim light visible, however dark the night.

The longing became a necessity. She could not lie there. She sprang out of bed, and hurried across towards the window. She had not stopped to light her candle and she held her hands outstretched in front of her. Suddenly, as she was half-way across the room, her hands touched something soft.

She drew them back with a gasp of fright and stood stone-still, stone-cold. She had touched a human face. Already the thief was in the room. She stood without a cry, without a movement, while her heart leaped and fluttered within her bosom. She knew in that moment the extremity of mortal fear.

A loud scratch sounded sharply in the room. A match spurted into flame, and above the match there sprang into view, framed in the blackness of the room, a wild and menacing dark face. The eyes glittered at her, and suddenly a hand was raised as if to strike. And at the gesture Violet Oliver found her voice.

She screamed, a loud shrill scream of terror, and even as she screamed, in the very midst of her terror, she saw that the hand was lowered, and that the threatening face smiled. Then the match went out and darkness cloaked her and cloaked the thief again. She heard a quick stealthy movement, and once more her scream rang out. It seemed to her ages before any answer came, before she heard the sound of hurrying footsteps in the corridors. There was a loud rapping upon her door. She ran to it. She heard Ralston's voice.

"What is it? Open! Open!" and then in the garden the report of a rifle rang loud.

She turned up the lights, flung a dressing-gown about her shoulders and opened the door. Ralston was in the passage, behind him she saw lights strangely wavering and other faces. These too wavered strangely. From very far away, she heard Ralston's voice once more.

"What is it? What is it?"

And then she fell forward against him and sank in a swoon upon the floor.

Ralston lifted her on to her bed and summoned her maid. He went out of the house and made inquiries of the guard. The sentry's story was explicit and not to be shaken by any cross-examination. He had patrolled that side of the house in which Mrs. Oliver's room lay, all night. He had seen nothing. At one o'clock in the morning the moon sank and the night became very dark. It was about three when a few minutes after passing beneath the verandah, and just as he had turned the corner of the house, he heard a shrill scream from Mrs. Oliver's room. He ran back at once, and as he ran he heard a second scream. He saw no one, but he heard a rustling and cracking in the bushes as though a fugitive plunged through. He fired in the direction of the noise and then ran with all speed to the spot. He found no one, but the bushes were broken.

Ralston went back into the house and knocked at Mrs. Oliver's door. The maid opened it.

"How is Mrs. Oliver?" he asked, and he heard Violet herself reply faintly from the room:

"I am better, thank you. I was a little frightened, that's all."

"No wonder," said Ralston, and he spoke again to the maid. "Has anything gone? Has anything been stolen? There was a jewel-case upon the dressing-table. I saw it."

The maid looked at him curiously, before she answered. "Nothing has been touched."

Then, with a glance towards the bed, the maid stooped quickly to a trunk which stood against the wall close by the door and then slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her. The corridors were now lighted up, as though it were still evening and the household had not yet gone to bed. Ralston saw that the maid held a bundle in her hands.

"I do not think," she said in a whisper, "that the thief came to steal any thing." She laid some emphasis upon the word.

Ralston took the bundle from her hands and stared at it.

"Good God!" he muttered. He was astonished and more than astonished. There was something of horror in his low exclamation. He looked at the maid. She was a woman of forty. She had the look of a capable woman. She was certainly quite self-possessed.

"Does your mistress know of this?" he asked.

The maid shook her head.

"No, sir. I saw it upon the floor before she came to. I hid it between the trunk and the wall." She spoke with an ear to the door of the room in which Violet lay, and in a low voice.

"Good!" said Ralston. "You had better tell her nothing of it for the present. It would only frighten her"; as he ended he heard Violet Oliver call out:

"Adela! Adela!"

"Mrs. Oliver wants me," said the maid, as she slipped back into the bedroom.

Ralston walked slowly back down the corridor into the great hall. He was carrying the bundle in his hands and his face was very grave. He saw Dick Linforth in the hall, and before he spoke he looked upwards to the gallery which ran round it. Even when he had assured himself that there was no one listening, he spoke in a low voice.

"Do you see this, Linforth?"

He held out the bundle. There was a thick cloth, a sort of pad of cotton, and some thin strong cords.

"These were found in Mrs. Oliver's room."

He laid the things upon the table and Linforth turned them over, startled as Ralston had been.

"I don't understand," he said.

"They were left behind," said Ralston.

"By the thief?"

"If he was a thief"; and again Linforth said:

"I don't understand."

But there was now more of anger, more of horror in his voice, than surprise; and as he spoke he took up the pad of cotton wool.

"You do understand," said Ralston, quietly.

Linforth's fingers worked. That pad of cotton seemed to him more sinister than even the cords.

"For her!" he cried, in a quiet but dangerous voice. "For Violet," and at that moment neither noticed his utterance of her Christian name. "Let me only find the man who entered her room."

Ralston looked steadily at Linforth.

"Have you any suspicion as to who the man is?" he asked.

There was a momentary silence in that quiet hall. Both men stood looking at each other.

"It can't be," said Linforth, at length. But he spoke rather to himself than to Ralston. "It can't be."

Ralston did not press the question.

"It's the insolence of the attempt which angers me," he said. "We must wait until Mrs. Oliver can tell us what happened, what she saw. Meanwhile, she knows nothing of those things. There is no need that she should know."

He left Linforth standing in the hall and went up the stairs. When he reached the gallery, he leaned over quietly and looked down.

Linforth was still standing by the table, fingering the cotton-pad.

Ralston heard him say again in a voice which was doubtful now rather than incredulous:

"It can't be he! He would not dare!"

But no name was uttered.



CHAPTER XXIX

MRS. OLIVER RIDES THROUGH PESHAWUR

Violet Oliver told her story later during that day. But there was a certain hesitation in her manner which puzzled Ralston, at all events, amongst her audience.

"When you went to your room," he asked, "did you find the window again unbolted?"

"No," she replied. "It was really my fault last night. I felt the heat oppressive. I opened the window myself and went out on to the verandah. When I came back I think that I did not bolt it."

"You forgot?" asked Ralston in surprise.

But this was not the only surprising element in the story.

"When you touched the man, he did not close with you, he made no effort to silence you," Ralston said. "That is strange enough. But that he should strike a match, that he should let you see his face quite clearly—that's what I don't understand. It looks, Mrs. Oliver, as if he almost wanted you to recognise him."

Ralston turned in his chair sharply towards her. "Did you recognise him?" he asked.

"Yes," Violet Oliver replied. "At least I think I did. I think that I had seen him before."

Here at all events it was clear that she was concealing nothing. She was obviously as puzzled as Ralston was himself.

"Where had you seen him?" he asked, and the answer increased his astonishment.

"In Calcutta," she answered. "It was the same man or one very like him. I saw him on three successive evenings in the Maidan when I was driving there."

"In Calcutta?" cried Ralston. "Some months ago, then?"

"Yes."

"How did you come to notice him in the Maidan?" Mrs. Oliver shivered slightly as she answered:

"He seemed to be watching me. I thought so at the time. It made me uncomfortable. Now I am sure. He was watching me," and she suddenly came forward a step.

"I should like to go away to-day if you and your sister won't mind," she pleaded.

Ralston's forehead clouded.

"Of course, I quite understand," he said, "and if you wish to go we can't prevent you. But you leave us rather helpless, don't you?—as you alone can identify the man. Besides, you leave yourself too in danger."

"But I shall go far away," she urged. "As it is I am going back to England in a month."

"Yes," Ralston objected. "But you have not yet started, and if the man followed you from Calcutta to Peshawur, he may follow you from Peshawur to Bombay."

Mrs. Oliver drew back with a start of terror and Ralston instantly took back his words.

"Of course, we will take care of you on your way south. You may rely on that," he said with a smile. "But if you could bring yourself to stay here for a day or two I should be much obliged. You see, it is impossible to fix the man's identity from a description, and it is really important that he should be caught."

"Yes, I understand," said Violet Oliver, and she reluctantly consented to stay.

"Thank you," said Ralston, and he looked at her with a smile. "There is one more thing which I should like you to do. I should like you to ride out with me this afternoon through Peshawur. The story of last night will already be known in the bazaars. Of that you may be very sure. And it would be a good thing if you were seen to ride through the city quite unconcerned."

Violet Oliver drew back from the ordeal which Ralston so calmly proposed to her.

"I shall be with you," he said. "There will be no danger—or at all events no danger that Englishwomen are unprepared to face in this country."

The appeal to her courage served Ralston's turn. Violet raised her head with a little jerk of pride.

"Certainly I will ride with you this afternoon through Peshawur," she said; and she went out of the room and left Ralston alone.

He sat at his desk trying to puzzle out the enigma of the night. The more he thought upon it, the further he seemed from any solution. There was the perplexing behaviour of Mrs. Oliver herself. She had been troubled, greatly troubled, to find her window unbolted on two successive nights after she had taken care to bolt it. Yet on the third night she actually unbolts it herself and leaving it unbolted puts out her light and goes to bed. It seemed incredible that she should so utterly have forgotten her fears. But still more bewildering even than her forgetfulness was the conduct of the intruder.

Upon that point he took Linforth into his counsels.

"I can't make head or tail of it," he cried. "Here the fellow is in the dark room with his cords and the thick cloth and the pad. Mrs. Oliver touches him. He knows that his presence is revealed to her. She is within reach. And she stands paralysed by fear, unable to cry out. Yet he does nothing, except light a match and give her a chance to recognise his face. He does not seize her, he does not stifle her voice, as he could have done—yes, as he could have done, before she could have uttered a cry. He strikes a match and shows her his face."

"So that he might see hers," said Linforth. Ralston shook his head. He was not satisfied with that explanation. But Linforth had no other to offer. "Have you any clue to the man?"

"None," said Ralston.

He rode out with Mrs. Oliver that afternoon down from his house to the Gate of the City. Two men of his levies rode at a distance of twenty paces behind them. But these were his invariable escort. He took no unusual precautions. There were no extra police in the streets. He went out with his guest at his side for an afternoon ride as if nothing whatever had occurred. Mrs. Oliver played her part well. She rode with her head erect and her eyes glancing boldly over the crowded streets. Curious glances were directed at her, but she met them without agitation. Ralston observed her with a growing admiration.

"Thank you," he said warmly. "I know this can hardly be a pleasant experience for you. But it is good for these people here to know that nothing they can do will make any difference—no not enough to alter the mere routine of our lives. Let us go forward."

They turned to the left at the head of the main thoroughfare, and passed at a walk, now through the open spaces where the booths were erected, now through winding narrow streets between high houses. Violet Oliver, though she held her head high and her eyes were steady, rode with a fluttering heart. In front of them, about them, and behind them the crowd of people thronged, tribesmen from the hills, Mohammedans and Hindus of the city; from the upper windows the lawyers and merchants looked down upon them; and Violet held all of them in horror.

The occurrence of last night had inflicted upon her a heavier shock than either Ralston imagined or she herself had been aware until she had ridden into the town. The dark wild face suddenly springing into view above the lighted match was as vivid and terrible to her still, as a nightmare to a child. She was afraid that at any moment she might see that face again in the throng of faces. Her heart sickened with dread at the thought, and even though she should not see him, at every step she looked upon twenty of his like—kinsmen, perhaps, brothers in blood and race. She shrank from them in repulsion and she shrank from them in fear. Every nerve of her body seemed to cry out against the folly of this ride.

What were they two and the two levies behind them against the throng? Four at the most against thousands at the least.

She touched Ralston timidly on the arm.

"Might we go home now?" she asked in a voice which trembled; and he looked suddenly and anxiously into her face.

"Certainly," he said, and he wheeled his horse round, keeping close to her as she wheeled hers.

"It is all right," he said, and his voice took on an unusual friendliness. "We have not far to go. It was brave of you to have come, and I am very grateful. We ask much of the Englishwomen in India, and because they never fail us, we are apt to ask too much. I asked too much of you." Violet responded to the flick at her national pride. She drew herself up and straightened her back.

"No," she said, and she actually counterfeited a smile. "No. It's all right."

"I asked more than I had a right to ask," he continued remorsefully. "I am sorry. I have lived too much amongst men. That's my trouble. One becomes inconsiderate to women. It's ignorance, not want of good-will. Look!" To distract her thoughts he began to point her out houses and people which were of interest.

"Do you see that sign there, 'Bahadur Gobind, Barrister-at-Law, Cambridge B.A.,' on the first floor over the cookshop? Yes, he is the genuine article. He went to Cambridge and took his degree and here he is back again. Take him for all in all, he is the most seditious man in the city. Meanly seditious. It only runs to writing letters over a pseudonym in the native papers. Now look up. Do you see that very respectable white-bearded gentleman on the balcony of his house? Well, his daughter-in-law disappeared one day when her husband was away from home—disappeared altogether. It had been a great grief to the old gentleman that she had borne no son to inherit the family fortune. So naturally people began to talk. She was found subsequently under the floor of the house, and it cost that respectable old gentleman twenty thousand rupees to get himself acquitted."

Ralston pulled himself up with a jerk, realising that this was not the most appropriate story which he could have told to a lady with the overstrained nerves of Mrs. Oliver.

He turned to her with a fresh apology upon his lips. But the apology was never spoken.

"What's the matter, Mrs. Oliver?" he asked.

She had not heard the story of the respectable old gentleman. That was clear. They were riding through an open oblong space of ground dotted with trees. There were shops down the middle, two rows backing upon a stream, and shops again at the sides. Mrs. Oliver was gazing with a concentrated look across the space and the people who crowded it towards an opening of an alley between two houses. But fixed though her gaze was, there was no longer any fear in her eyes. Rather they expressed a keen interest, a strong curiosity.

Ralston's eyes followed the direction of her gaze. At the corner of the alley there was a shop wherein a man sat rounding a stick of wood with a primitive lathe. He made the lathe revolve by working a stringed bow with his right hand, while his left hand worked the chisel and his right foot directed it. His limbs were making three different motions with an absence of effort which needed much practice, and for a moment Ralston wondered whether it was the ingenuity of the workman which had attracted her. But in a moment he saw that he was wrong.

There were two men standing in the mouth of the alley, both dressed in white from head to foot. One stood a little behind with the hood of his cloak drawn forward over his head, so that it was impossible to discern his face. The other stood forward, a tall slim man with the elegance and the grace of youth. It was at this man Violet Oliver was looking.

Ralston looked again at her, and as he looked the colour rose into her cheeks; there came a look of sympathy, perhaps of pity, into her eyes. Almost her lips began to smile. Ralston turned his head again towards the alley, and he started in his saddle. The young man had raised his head. He was gazing fixedly towards them. His features were revealed and Ralston knew them well.

He turned quickly to Mrs. Oliver.

"You know that man?"

The colour deepened upon her face.

"It is the Prince of Chiltistan."

"But you know him?" Ralston insisted.

"I have met him in London," said Violet Oliver.

So Shere Ali was in Peshawur, when he should have been in Chiltistan! "Why?"

Ralston put the question to himself and looked to his companion for the answer. The colour upon her face, the interest, the sympathy of her eyes gave him the answer. This was the woman, then, whose image stood before Shere Ali's memories and hindered him from marrying one of his own race! Just with that sympathy and that keen interest does a woman look upon the man who loves her and whose love she does not return. Moreover, there was Linforth's hesitation. Linforth had admitted there was an Englishwoman for whom Shere Ali cared, had admitted it reluctantly, had extenuated her thoughtlessness, had pleaded for her. Oh, without a doubt Mrs. Oliver was the woman!

There flashed before Ralston's eyes the picture of Linforth standing in the hall, turning over the cords and the cotton pad and the thick cloth. Ralston looked down again upon him from the gallery and heard his voice, saying in a whisper:

"It can't be he! It can't be he!"

What would Linforth say when he knew that Shere Ali was lurking in Peshawur?

Ralston was still gazing at Shere Ali when the man behind the Prince made a movement. He flung back the hood from his face, and disclosing his features looked boldly towards the riders.

A cry rang out at Ralston's side, a woman's cry. He turned in his saddle and saw Violet Oliver. The colour had suddenly fled from her cheeks. They were blanched. The sympathy had gone from her eyes, and in its place, stark terror looked out from them. She swayed in her saddle.

"Do you see that man?" she cried, pointing with her hand. "The man behind the Prince. The man who has thrown back his cloak."

"Yes, yes, I see him," answered Ralston impatiently.

"It was he who crept into my room last night."

"You are sure?"

"Could I forget? Could I forget?" she cried; and at that moment, the man touched Shere Ali on the sleeve, and they both fled out of sight into the alley.

There was no doubt left in Ralston's mind. It was Shere Ali who had planned the abduction of Mrs. Oliver. It was his companion who had failed to carry it out. Ralston turned to the levies behind him.

"Quick! Into that valley! Fetch me those two men who were standing there!"

The two levies pressed their horses through the crowd, but the alley was empty when they came to it.



CHAPTER XXX

THE NEEDED IMPLEMENT

Ralston rode home with an uncomfortable recollection of the little dinner-party in Calcutta at which Hatch had told his story of the Englishwoman in Mecca. Had that story fired Shere Ali? The time for questions had passed; but none the less this particular one would force itself into the front of his mind.

"I would have done better never to have meddled," he said to himself remorsefully—even while he gave his orders for the apprehension of Shere Ali and his companion. For he did not allow his remorse to hamper his action; he set a strong guard at the gates of the city, and gave orders that within the gates the city should be methodically searched quarter by quarter.

"I want them both laid by the heels," he said; "but, above all, the Prince. Let there be no mistake. I want Shere Ali lodged in the gaol here before nightfall"; and Linforth's voice broke in rapidly upon his words.

"Can I do anything to help? What can I do?"

Ralston looked sharply up from his desk. There had been a noticeable eagerness, a noticeable anger in Linforth's voice.

"You?" said Ralston quietly. "You want to help? You were Shere Ali's friend."

Ralston smiled as he spoke, but there was no hint of irony in either words or smile. It was a smile rather of tolerance, and almost of regret—the smile of a man who was well accustomed to seeing the flowers and decorative things of life wither over-quickly, and yet was still alert and not indifferent to the change. His work for the moment was done. He leaned back thoughtfully in his chair. He no longer looked at Linforth. His one quick glance had shown him enough.

"So it's all over, eh?" he said, as he played with his paper-knife. "Summer mornings on the Cherwell. Travels in the Dauphine. The Meije and the Aiguilles d'Arves. Oh, I know." Linforth moved as he stood at the side of Ralston's desk, but the set look upon his face did not change. And Ralston went on. There came a kind of gentle mockery into his voice. "The shared ambitions, the concerted plans—gone, and not even a regret for them left, eh? Tempi passati! Pretty sad, too, when you come to think of it."

But Linforth made no answer to Ralston's probings. Violet Oliver's instincts had taught her the truth, which Ralston was now learning. Linforth could be very hard. There was nothing left of the friendship which through many years had played so large a part in his life. A woman had intervened, and Linforth had shut the door upon it, had sealed his mind against its memories, and his heart against its claims. The evening at La Grave in the Dauphine had borne its fruit. Linforth stood there white with anger against Shere Ali, hot to join in the chase. Ralston understood that if ever he should need a man to hunt down that quarry through peril and privations, here at his hand was the man on whom he could rely.

Linforth's eager voice broke in again.

"What can I do to help?"

Ralston looked up once more.

"Nothing—for the moment. If Shere Ali is captured in Peshawur—nothing at all."

"But if he escapes."

Ralston shrugged his shoulders. Then he filled his pipe and lit it.

"If he escapes—why, then, your turn may come. I make no promises," he added quickly, as Linforth, by a movement, betrayed his satisfaction. "It is not, indeed, in my power to promise. But there may come work for you—difficult work, dangerous work, prolonged work. For this outrage can't go unpunished. In any case," he ended with a smile, "the Road goes on."

He turned again to his office-table, and Linforth went out of the room.

The task which Ralston had in view for Linforth came by a long step nearer that night. For all night the search went on throughout the city, and the searchers were still empty-handed in the morning. Ahmed Ismail had laid his plans too cunningly. Shere Ali was to be compromised, not captured. There was to be a price upon his head, but the head was not to fall. And while the search went on from quarter to quarter of Peshawur, the Prince and his attendant were already out in the darkness upon the hills.

Ralston telegraphed to the station on the Malakand Pass, to the fort at Jamrud, even to Landi Khotal, at the far end of the Khyber Pass, but Shere Ali had not travelled along any one of the roads those positions commanded.

"I had little hope indeed that he would," said Ralston with a shrug of the shoulders. "He has given us the slip. We shall not catch up with him now."

He was standing with Linforth at the mouth of the well which irrigated his garden. The water was drawn up after the Persian plan. A wooden vertical wheel wound up the bucket, and this wheel was made to revolve by a horizontal wheel with the spokes projecting beyond the rim and fitting into similar spokes upon the vertical wheel. A bullock, with a bandage over its eyes, was harnessed to the horizontal wheel, and paced slowly round and round, turning it; while a boy sat on the bullock's back and beat it with a stick. Both men stood and listened to the groaning and creaking of the wheels for a few moments, and then Linforth said:

"So, after all, you mean to let him go?"

"No, indeed," answered Ralston. "Only now we shall have to fetch him out of Chiltistan."

"Will they give him up?"

Ralston shook his head.

"No." He turned to Linforth with a smile. "I once heard the Political Officer described as the man who stands between the soldier and his medal. Well, I have tried to stand just in that spot as far as Chiltistan is concerned. But I have not succeeded. The soldier will get his medal in Chiltistan this year. I have had telegrams this morning from Lahore. A punitive force has been gathered at Nowshera. The preparations have been going on quietly for a few weeks. It will start in a few days. I shall go with it as Political Officer."

"You will take me?" Linforth asked eagerly.

"Yes," Ralston answered. "I mean to take you. I told you yesterday there might be service for you."

"In Chiltistan?"

"Or beyond," replied Ralston. "Shere Ali may give us the slip again."

He was thinking of the arid rocky borders of Turkestan, where flight would be easy and where capture would be most difficult. It was to that work that Ralston, looking far ahead, had in his mind dedicated young Linforth, knowing well that he would count its difficulties light in the ardour of his pursuit. Anger would spur him, and the Road should be held out as his reward. Ralston listened again to the groaning of the water-wheel, and watched the hooded bullock circle round and round with patient unvarying pace, and the little boy on its back making no difference whatever with a long stick.

"Look!" he said. "There's an emblem of the Indian administration. The wheels creak and groan, the bullock goes on round and round with a bandage over its eyes, and the little boy on its back cuts a fine important figure and looks as if he were doing ever so much, and somehow the water comes up—that's the great thing, the water is fetched up somehow and the land watered. When I am inclined to be despondent, I come and look at my water-wheel." He turned away and walked back to the house with his hands folded behind his back and his head bent forward.

"You are despondent now?" Linforth asked.

"Yes," replied Ralston, with a rare and sudden outburst of confession. "You, perhaps, will hardly understand. You are young. You have a career to make. You have particular ambitions. This trouble in Chiltistan is your opportunity. But it's my sorrow—it's almost my failure." He turned his face towards Linforth with a whimsical smile. "I have tried to stand between the soldier and his medal. I wanted to extend our political influence there—yes. Because that makes for peace, and it makes for good government. The tribes lose their fear that their independence will be assailed, they come in time to the Political Officer for advice, they lay their private quarrels and feuds before him for arbitration. That has happened in many valleys, and I had always a hope that though Chiltistan has a ruling Prince, the same sort of thing might in time happen there. Yes, even at the cost of the Road," and again his very taking smile illumined for a moment his worn face. "But that hope is gone now. A force will go up and demand Shere Ali. Shere Ali will not be given up. Even were the demand not made, it would make no difference. He will not be many days in Chiltistan before Chiltistan is in arms. Already I have sent a messenger up to the Resident, telling him to come down."

"And then?" asked Linforth.

Ralston shrugged his shoulders.

"More or less fighting, more or less loss, a few villages burnt, and the only inevitable end. We shall either take over the country or set up another Prince."

"Set up another Prince?" exclaimed Linforth in a startled voice. "In that case—"

Ralston broke in upon him with a laugh.

"Oh, man of one idea, in any case the Road will go on to the foot of the Hindu Kush. That's the price which Chiltistan must pay as security for future peace—the military road through Kohara to the foot of the Hindu Kush."

Linforth's face cleared, and he said cheerfully:

"It's strange that Shere Ali doesn't realise that himself."

The cheerfulness of his voice, as much as his words, caused Ralston to stop and turn upon his companion in a moment of exasperation.

"Perhaps he does." he exclaimed, and then he proceeded to pay a tribute to the young Prince of Chiltistan which took Linforth fairly by surprise.

"Don't you understand—you who know him, you who grew up with him, you who were his friend? He's a man. I know these hill-people, and like every other Englishman who has served among them, I love them—knowing their faults. Shere Ali has the faults of the Pathan, or some of them. He has their vanity; he has, if you like, their fanaticism. But he's a man. He's flattered and petted like a lap-dog, he's played with like a toy. Well, he's neither a lap-dog nor a toy, and he takes the flattery and the petting seriously. He thinks it's meant, and he behaves accordingly. What, then? The toy is thrown down on the ground, the lap-dog is kicked into the corner. But he's not a lap-dog, he's not a toy. He's a man. He has a man's resentments, a man's wounded heart, a man's determination not to submit to flattery one moment and humiliation the next. So he strikes. He tries to take the white, soft, pretty thing which has been dangled before his eyes and snatched away—he tries to take her by force and fails. He goes back to his own people, and strikes. Do you blame him? Would you rather he sat down and grumbled and bragged of his successes, and took to drink, as more than one down south has done? Perhaps so. It would be more comfortable if he did. But which of the pictures do you admire? Which of the two is the better man? For me, the man who strikes—even if I have to go up into his country and exact the penalty afterwards. Shere Ali is one of the best of the Princes. But he has been badly treated and so he must suffer."

Ralston repeated his conclusion with a savage irony. "That's the whole truth. He's one of the best of them. Therefore he doesn't take bad treatment with a servile gratitude. Therefore he must suffer still more. But the fault in the beginning was not his."

Thus it fell to Ralston to explain, twenty-six years later, the saying of a long-forgotten Political Officer which had seemed so dark to Colonel Dewes when it was uttered in the little fort in Chiltistan. There was a special danger for the best in the upbringing of the Indian princes in England.

Linforth flushed as he listened to the tirade, but he made no answer. Ralston looked at him keenly, wondering with a queer amusement whether he had not blunted the keen edge of that tool which he was keeping at his side because he foresaw the need of it. But there was no sign of any softening upon Linforth's face. He could be hard, but on the other hand, when he gave his faith he gave it without reserve. Almost every word which Ralston had spoken had seemed to him an aspersion upon Violet Oliver. He said nothing, for he had learned to keep silence. But his anger was hotter than ever against Shere Ali, since but for Shere Ali the aspersions would never have been cast.



CHAPTER XXXI

AN OLD TOMB AND A NEW SHRINE

The messenger whom Ralston sent with a sealed letter to the Resident at Kohara left Peshawur in the afternoon and travelled up the road by way of Dir and the Lowari Pass. He travelled quickly, spending little of his time at the rest-houses on the way, and yet arrived no sooner on that account. It was not he at all who brought his news to Kohara. Neither letter nor messenger, indeed, ever reached the Resident's door, although Captain Phillips learned something of the letter's contents a day before the messenger was due. A queer, and to use his own epithet, a dramatic stroke of fortune aided him at a very critical moment.

It happened in this way. While Captain Phillips was smoking a cheroot as he sat over his correspondence in the morning, a servant from the great Palace on the hill brought to him a letter in the Khan's own handwriting. It was a flowery letter and invoked many blessings upon the Khan's faithful friend and brother, and wound up with a single sentence, like a lady's postscript, in which the whole object of the letter was contained. Would his Excellency the Captain, in spite of his overwhelming duties, of which the Khan was well aware, since they all tended to the great benefit and prosperity of his State, be kind enough to pay a visit to the Khan that day?

"What's the old rascal up to now?" thought Captain Phillips. He replied, with less ornament and fewer flourishes, that he would come after breakfast; and mounting his horse at the appointed time he rode down through the wide street of Kohara and up the hill at the end, on the terraced slopes of which climbed the gardens and mud walls of the Palace. He was led at once into the big reception-room with the painted walls and the silver-gilt chairs, where the Khan had once received his son with a loaded rifle across his knees. The Khan was now seated with his courtiers about him, and was carving the rind of a pomegranate into patterns, like a man with his thoughts far away. But he welcomed Captain Phillips with alacrity and at once dismissed his Court.

Captain Phillips settled down patiently in his chair. He was well aware of the course the interview would take. The Khan would talk away without any apparent aim for an hour or two hours, passing carelessly from subject to subject, and then suddenly the important question would be asked, the important subject mooted. On this occasion, however, the Khan came with unusual rapidity to his point. A few inquiries as to the Colonel's health, a short oration on the backwardness of the crops, a lengthier one upon his fidelity to and friendship for the British Government and the miserable return ever made to him for it, and then came a question ludicrously inapposite and put with the solemn naivet, of a child.

"I suppose you know," said the Khan, tugging at his great grey beard, "that my grandfather married a fairy for one of his wives?"

It was on the strength of such abrupt questions that strangers were apt to think that the Khan had fallen into his second childhood before his time. But the Resident knew his man. He was aware that the Khan was watching for his answer. He sat up in his chair and answered politely:

"So, your Highness, I have heard."

"Yes, it is true," continued the Khan. "Moreover, the fairy bore him a daughter who is still alive, though very old."

"So there is still a fairy in the family," replied Captain Phillips pleasantly, while he wondered what in the world the Khan was driving at. "Yes, indeed, I know that. For only a week ago I was asked by a poor man up the valley to secure your Highness's intercession. It seems that he is much plagued by a fairy who has taken possession of his house, and since your Highness is related to the fairies, he would be very grateful if you would persuade his fairy to go away."

"I know," said the Khan gravely. "The case has already been brought to me. The fellow will open closed boxes in his house, and the fairy resents it."

"Then your Highness has exorcised the fairy?"

"No; I have forbidden him to open boxes in his house," said the Khan; and then, with a smile, "But it was not of him we were speaking, but of the fairy in my family."

He leaned forward and his voice shook.

"She sends me warnings, Captain Sahib. Two nights ago, by the flat stone where the fairies dance, she heard them—the voices of an innumerable multitude in the air talking the Chilti tongue—talking of trouble to come in the near days."

He spoke with burning eyes fixed upon the Resident and with his fingers playing nervously in and out among the hairs of his beard. Whether the Khan really believed the story of the fairies—there is nothing more usual than a belief in fairies in the countries bordered by the snow-peaks of the Hindu Kush—or whether he used the story as a blind to conceal the real source of his fear, the Resident could not decide. But what he did know was this: The Khan of Chiltistan was desperately afraid. A whole programme of reform was sketched out for the Captain's hearing.