their foreheads to the tiles—­rows and rows covering the enclosure up to the arches of the mosque itself.  There were others too—­rows and rows within the arches, in the dusk of the mosque itself, and from man to man emotion passed like a spark upon the wind.  The crowd grew denser, there came a suspense, a tension.  It gained upon all, it laid its clutch upon Shere Ali.  He ceased to think, even upon his injuries, he was possessed with expectancy.  And then a man kneeling beside him interrupted his prayers and began to curse fiercely beneath his breath.

“May they burn, they and their fathers and their children, to the last generation!” And he added epithets of a surprising ingenuity.  The while he looked backwards over his shoulder.

Shere Ali followed his example.  He saw at the back of the enclosure, in the galleries which surmounted the archway and the wall, English men and English women waiting.  Shere Ali’s blood boiled at the sight.  They were laughing, talking.  Some of them had brought sandwiches and were eating their lunch.  Others were taking photographs with their cameras.  They were waiting for the show to begin.

Shere Ali followed the example of his neighbour and cursed them.  All his anger kindled again and quickened into hatred.  They were so careful of themselves, so careless of others!

“Not a Mohammedan,” he cried to himself, “must set foot in their graveyard at Lucknow, but they come to our mosque as to a show.”

Suddenly he saw the priest climb the ladder on to the high wooden platform in front of the central arch of the mosque and bow his forehead to the floor.  His voice rang out resonant and clear and confident over that vast assemblage.

“There is only one God.”

And a shiver passed across the rows of kneeling men, as though unexpectedly a wind had blown across a ripe field of corn.  Shere Ali was moved like the rest, but all the while at the back of his mind there was the thought of those white people in the galleries.

“They are laughing at us, they are making a mock of us, they think we are of no account.”  And fiercely he called upon his God, the God of the Mohammedans, to root them out from the land and cast them as weeds in the flame.

The priest stood up erect upon the platform, and with a vibrating voice, now plaintive and conveying some strange sense of loneliness, now loud in praise, now humble in submission, he intoned the prayers.  His voice rose and sank, reverberating back over the crowded courtyard from the walls of the mosque.  Shere Ali prayed too, but he prayed silently, with all the fervour of a fanatic, that it might be his hand which should drive the English to their ships upon the sea.

When he rose and came out from the mosque he turned to Ahmed Ismail.

“There are some of my people in Delhi?”

Ahmed Ismail bowed.

“Let us go to them,” said Shere Ali; he sought refuge amongst them from the thought of those people in the galleries.  Ahmed Ismail was well content with the results of his pilgrimage.  Shere Ali, as he paced the streets of Delhi with a fierce rapt look in his eyes, had the very aspect of a Ghazi fresh from the hills and bent upon murder and immolation.