It is a far cry from Peshawur to Ajmere, and Linforth travelled in the train for two nights and the greater part of two days before he came to it.  A little State carved out of Rajputana and settled under English rule, it is the place of all places where East and West come nearest to meeting.  Within the walls of the city the great Dargah Mosque, with its shrine of pilgrimage and its ancient rites, lies close against the foot of the Taragarh Hill.  Behind it the mass of the mountain rises steeply to its white crown of fortress walls.  In front, its high bright-blue archway, a thing of cupolas and porticoes, faces the narrow street of the grain-sellers and the locksmiths.  Here is the East, with its memories of Akbar and Shah Jehan, its fiery superstitions and its crudities of decoration.  Gaudy chandeliers of coloured glass hang from the roof of a marble mosque, and though the marble may crack and no one give heed to it, the glass chandeliers will be carefully swathed in holland bags.  Here is the East, but outside the city walls the pile of Mayo College rises high above its playing-grounds and gives to the princes and the chiefs of Rajputana a modern public school for the education of their sons.

From the roof top of the college tower Linforth looked to the city huddled under the Taragarh Hill, and dimly made out the high archway of the mosque.  He turned back to the broad playing-fields at his feet where a cricket match was going on.  There was the true solution of the great problem, he thought.

“Here at Ajmere,” he said to himself, “Shere Ali could have learned what the West had to teach him.  Had he come here he would have been spared the disappointments, and the disillusions.  He would not have fallen in with Violet Oliver.  He would have married and ruled in his own country.”

As it was, he had gone instead to Eton and to Oxford, and Linforth must needs search for him over there in the huddled city under the Taragarh Hill.  Ralston’s Pathan was even then waiting for Linforth at the bottom of the tower.

“Sir,” he said, making a low salaam when Linforth had descended, “His Highness Shere Ali is now in Ajmere.  Every morning between ten and eleven he is to be found in a balcony above the well at the back of the Dargah Mosque, and to-morrow I will lead you to him.”

“Every morning!” said Linforth.  “What does he do upon this balcony?”

“He watches the well below, and the water-carriers descending with their jars,” said the Pathan, “and he talks with his friends.  That is all.”

“Very well,” said Linforth.  “To-morrow we will go to him.”

He passed up the steps under the blue portico a little before the hour on the next morning, and entered a stone-flagged court which was thronged with pilgrims.  On each side of the archway a great copper vat was raised upon stone steps, and it was about these two vats that the crowd thronged.  Linforth and his guide could hardly force their way through.  On the steps of the vats natives, wrapped to the eyes in cloths to save themselves from burns, stood emptying the caldrons of boiling ghee.  And on every side Linforth heard the name of Shere Ali spoken in praise.