And Shere Ali broke out with a fierce oath.

“Amongst the hills, at all events, there are men today.  There is no sacred ground for them in Chiltistan.”

“Not even the Road?” asked Ahmed Ismail; and Shere Ali stopped dead, and stared at his companion with startled eyes.  He walked away in silence after that; and for the rest of that day he said little to Ahmed Ismail, who watched him anxiously.  At night, however, Ahmed was justified of his policy.  For Shere Ali appeared before him in the white robes of a Mohammedan.  Up till then he had retained the English dress.  Now he had discarded it.  Ahmed Ismail fell at his feet, and bowed himself to the ground.

“My Lord!  My Lord!” he cried, and there was no simulation in his outburst of joy.  “Would that your people could behold you now!  But we have much to see first.  To-morrow we go to Lucknow.”

Accordingly the two men travelled the next day to Lucknow.  Shere Ali was led up under the broken archway by Evans’s Battery into the grounds of the Residency.  He walked with Ahmed Ismail at his elbow on the green lawns where the golden-crested hoopoes flashed in the sunlight and the ruined buildings stood agape to the air.  They looked peaceful enough, as they strolled from one battery to another, but all the while Ahmed Ismail preached his sermon into Shere Ali’s ears.  There Lawrence had died; here at the top of the narrow lane had stood Johannes’s house whence Nebo the Nailer had watched day after day with his rifle in his hand.  Hardly a man, be he never so swift, could cross that little lane from one quarter of the Residency to another, so long as daylight lasted and so long as Nebo the Nailer stood behind the shutters of Johannes’s house.  Shere Ali was fired by the story of that siege.  By so little was the garrison saved.  Ahmed Ismail led him down to a corner of the grounds and once more a sentry barred the way.

“This is the graveyard,” said Ahmed Ismail, and Shere Ali, looking up, stepped back with a look upon his face which Ahmed Ismail did not understand.

“Huzoor!” he said anxiously, and Shere Ali turned upon him with an imperious word.

“Silence, dog!” he cried.  “Stand apart.  I wish to be alone.”

His eyes were on the little church with the trees and the wall girding it in.  At the side a green meadow with high trees, had the look of a playing-ground—­the playing-ground of some great public school in England.  Shere Ali’s eyes took in the whole picture, and then saw it but dimly through a mist.  For the little church, though he had never seen it before, was familiar and most moving.  It was a model of the Royal Chapel at Eton, and, in spite of himself, as he gazed the tears filled his eyes and the memory of his schooldays ached at his heart.  He yearned to be back once more in the shadow of that chapel with his comrades and his friends.  Not yet had he wholly forgotten; he was softened out of his bitterness; the burden of his jealousy and his anger fell for awhile from his shoulders.  When he rejoined Ahmed Ismail, he bade him follow and speak no word.  He drove back to the town, and then only he spoke to Ahmed Ismail.