.,' 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 e