Linforth’s evident emotion came upon Ralston as an unexpected thing.  He was carried back suddenly to his own youth, and was surprised to recollect that he, too, had once cherished great plans.  He saw himself as he was to-day, and, side by side with that disillusioned figure, he saw himself as he had been in his youth.  A smile of friendliness came over his face.

“If I had shut my eyes,” he said, “I should have thought it was your father who was speaking.”

Linforth turned quickly to Ralston.

“My father.  You knew him?”

“Yes.”

“I never did,” said Dick regretfully.

Ralston nodded his head and continued: 

“Twenty-six years ago we were here in Peshawur together.  We came up on to the top of this tower, as everyone does who comes to Peshawur.  He was like you.  He was dreaming night and day of the Great Road through Chiltistan to the foot of the Hindu Kush.  Look!” and Ralston pointed down to the roof-tops of the city, whereon the women and children worked and played.  For the most part they were enclosed within brick walls, and the two men looked down into them as you might look in the rooms of a doll’s house by taking off the lid.  Ralston pointed to one such open chamber just beneath their eyes.  An awning supported on wooden pillars sheltered one end of it, and between two of these pillars a child swooped backwards and forwards in a swing.  In the open, a woman, seated upon a string charpoy, rocked a cradle with her foot, while her hands were busy with a needle, and an old woman, with a black shawl upon her shoulders and head, sat near by, inactive.  But she was talking.  For at times the younger woman would raise her head, and, though at that distance no voice could be heard, it was evident that she was answering.  “I remember noticing that roof when your father and I were talking up here all those years ago.  There was just the same family group as you see now.  I remember it quite clearly, for your father went away to Chiltistan the next day, and never came back.  It was the last time I saw him, and we were both young and full of all the great changes we were to bring about.”  He smiled, half it seemed in amusement, half in regret.  “We talked of the Road, of course.  Well, there’s just one change.  The old woman, sitting there with the shawl upon her shoulders now, was in those days the young woman rocking the cradle and working with her needle.  That’s all.  Troubles there have been, disturbances, an expedition or two—­but there’s no real change.  Here are you talking of the Road just as your father did, not ambitious for yourself,” he explained with a kindly smile which illumined his whole face, “but ambitious for the Road, and the Road still stops at Kohara.”

“But it will go on—­now,” cried Linforth.

“Perhaps,” said Ralston slowly.  Then he stood up and confronted Linforth.

“It was not that you might carry on the Road that I brought you out from England,” he skid.  “On the contrary.”