thought of
political motive?"

"No, my friend--I do not suppose."

"Yet these things are said openly among our people: and too few, now,
have courage to speak their thought. For it is the loyal who
suffer--_shurrum ki bhat_![39] Is it surprising, _Hazur_, if we, who
distrust this new madness, begin to ask ourselves, 'Has the British Raj
lost the will--or the power--of former days to protect friends and smite
enemies'? If the noisy few clamouring for _Swaraj_ make India once more
a battlefield, _your_ people can go. We Sikhs must remain, with Pathans
and Afghans--as of old--hammering at our doors----"

At sight of the young Englishman's pained frown, he checked his
expansive mood. "To the Sahib I can freely speak the thoughts of my
heart; but this is not talk to make a sick man well. God is merciful.
Before all is lost--the British Raj may yet arise with power, as in the
great days...."

But his talk, if unpalatable, was more tonic than he knew; because Roy's
love for India went deeper than he knew. The justice of Jiwan Singh's
reproach; the hint at tragic severance of the two countries mingled
within him, waked him effectually from semi-torpor; and the process was
as painful as the tingling renewal of life in a frozen limb. By timely
courage, on the spot, the threat to India had been staved off: but it
was there still--sinister, unsleeping, virtually unchecked.

'Scotched--not killed.' The voice of Lance sounded too clearly in Roy's
brain; and the more intimate pain, deadened a little by illness, struck
at his heart like a sword....

* * * * *

Within a week, care and feeding and inimitable air, straight from the
snowfields, had made him, physically, a new man. Mentally, it had
brought him face to face with actualities, and the staggering question,
'What next'?

At the back of his mind he had been dreading it, evading it, because it
would force him to look deep into his own heart; and to make decisions,
when the effort of making them was anathema, beclouded as he was by the
depression that still brooded over him like a fog. The doctor had
prescribed a tonic and a whiff of Simla frivolity; but Roy paid no heed.
He knew his malady was mainly of the heart and the spirit. The true
curative touch could only come from some arrowy shaft that would pierce
to the core of one or the other.

This morning, by way of reasserting his normal self, he had risen very
early with intent to walk o