How rightly Andrew Linforth had judged!  But Dick for once felt no joy in the accuracy of the old man’s forecast.  He walked back through the city silent and with a heavy heart.  He had counted more than he had thought upon Shere Ali’s co-operation.  His friendship for Shere Ali had grown into a greater and a deeper force than he had ever imagined it until this moment to be.  He stopped with a sense of weariness and disillusionment, and then walked on again.  The Road would never again be quite the bright, inspiring thing which it had been.  The dream had a shadow upon it.  In the Eton and Oxford days he had given and given and given so much of himself to Shere Ali that he could not now lightly and easily lose him altogether out of his life.  Yet he must so lose him, and even then that was not all the truth.  For they would be enemies, Shere Ali would be ruined and cast out, and his ruin would be the opportunity of the Road.

He turned quickly to his companion.

“What was it that the Prince said,” he asked, “when the first of those water-carriers came down the steps and did not slip?  He beat his hands upon the balustrade of the balcony and cried out some words.  It seemed to me that his companion warned him of your presence, and that he stopped with the sentence half spoken.”

“That is the truth,” Linforth’s guide replied.  “The Prince cried out in anger, ‘How long must we wait?’”

Linforth nodded his head.

“He looked for the pitcher to fall and it did not fall,” he said.  “The breaking of the pitcher was to be a sign.”

“And the sign was given.  Do not forget that, your Excellency.  The sign was given.”

But what did the sign portend?  Linforth puzzled his brains vainly over that problem.  He had not the knowledge by which a man might cipher out the intrigues of the hill-folk beyond the Frontier.  Did the breaking of the pitcher mean that some definite thing had been done in Chiltistan, some breaking of the British power?  They might look upon the Raj as a heavy burden on their heads, like an earthen pitcher and as easily broken.  Ralston would know.

“You must travel back to Peshawur to-night,” said Linforth.  “Go straight to his Excellency the Chief Commissioner and tell him all that you saw upon the balcony and all that you heard.  If any man can interpret it, it will be he.  Meanwhile, show me where the Prince Shere Ali lodges in Ajmere.”

The policeman led Linforth to a tall house which closed in at one end a short and narrow street.

“It is here,” he said.

“Very well,” said Linforth, “I will seek out the Prince again.  I will stay in Ajmere and try by some way or another to have talk with him.”

But again Linforth was to fail.  He stayed for some days in Ajmere, but could never gain admittance to the house.  He was put off with the politest of excuses, delivered with every appearance of deep regret.  Now his Highness was unwell and could see no one but his physician.  At another time he was better—­so much better, indeed, that he was giving thanks to Allah for the restoration of his health in the Mosque of Shah Jehan.  Linforth could not reach him, nor did he ever see him in the streets of Ajmere.