out the time when you landed
in Bombay. And there is something rather strange--something, I think,
very disquieting in his movements since he left Calcutta. I have had him
watched, of course. He came north with one of his own countrymen, and the
pair of them have been seen at Cawnpore, at Lucknow, at Delhi."

Ralston paused. His face had grown very grave, very troubled.

"I am not sure," he said slowly. "It is difficult, however long you stay
in India, to get behind these fellows' minds, to understand the thoughts
and the motives which move them. And the longer you stay, the more
difficult you realise it to be. But it looks to me as if Shere Ali had
been taken by his companion on a sort of pilgrimage."

Linforth started.

"A pilgrimage!" and he added slowly, "I think I understand. A pilgrimage
to all the places which could most inflame the passions of a native
against the English race," and then he broke out in protest. "But it's
impossible. I know Shere Ali. It's not reasonable--"

Ralston interrupted him upon the utterance of the word.

"Reasonable!" he cried. "You are in India. Do ever white men act
reasonably in India?" and he turned with a smile. "There was a
great-uncle of yours in the days of the John Company, wasn't there? Your
father told me about him here on this tower. When his time was up, he
sent his money home and took his passage, and then came back--came back
to the mountains and disappeared. Very likely he may be sitting somewhere
beyond that barrier of hills by a little shrine to this hour, an old, old
man, reverenced as a saint, with a strip of cloth about his loins, and
forgetful of the days when he ruled a district in the Plains. I should
not wonder. It's not a reasonable country."

Ralston, indeed, was not far out in his judgment. Ahmed Ismail had
carried Shere Ali off from Calcutta. He had taken him first of all to
Cawnpore, and had led him up to the gate of the enclosure, wherein are
the Bibigarh, where the women and children were massacred, and the well
into which their bodies were flung. An English soldier turned them back
from that enclosure, refusing them admittance. Ahmed Ismail, knowing
well that it would be so, smiled quietly under his moustache; but Shere
Ali angrily pointed to some English tourists who were within the
enclosure.

"Why should we remain outside?" he asked.

"They are Bilati," said Ahmed Ismail in a smooth voice as they moved
away. "They are foreigners. The place