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 is sacred to the foreigners.  It is Indian soil; but the Indian may not walk on it; no, not though he were born next door.  Yet why should we grumble or complain?  We are the dirt beneath their feet.  We are dogs and sons of dogs, and a hireling will turn our Princes from the gate lest the soles of our shoes should defile their sacred places.  And are they not right, Huzoor?” he asked cunningly.  “Since we submit to it, since we cringe at their indignities and fawn upon them for their insults, are they not right?”

“Why, that’s true, Ahmed Ismail,” replied Shere Ali bitterly.  He was in the mood to make much of any trifle.  This reservation of the enclosure at Cawnpore was but one sign of the overbearing arrogance of the foreigners, the Bilati—­the men from over the sea.  He had fawned upon them himself in the days of his folly.

“But turn a little, Huzoor,” Ahmed whispered in his ear, and led him back.  “Look!  There is the Bibigarh where the women were imprisoned.  That is the house.  Through that opening Sirdar Khan and his four companions went—­and shut the door behind them.  In that room the women of Mecca knelt and prayed for mercy.  Come away, Huzoor.  We have seen.  Those were days when there were men upon the plains of India.”