“Set up another Prince?” exclaimed Linforth in a startled voice.  “In that case—­”

Ralston broke in upon him with a laugh.

“Oh, man of one idea, in any case the Road will go on to the foot of the Hindu Kush.  That’s the price which Chiltistan must pay as security for future peace—­the military road through Kohara to the foot of the Hindu Kush.”

Linforth’s face cleared, and he said cheerfully: 

“It’s strange that Shere Ali doesn’t realise that himself.”

The cheerfulness of his voice, as much as his words, caused Ralston to stop and turn upon his companion in a moment of exasperation.

“Perhaps he does.” he exclaimed, and then he proceeded to pay a tribute to the young Prince of Chiltistan which took Linforth fairly by surprise.

“Don’t you understand—­you who know him, you who grew up with him, you who were his friend?  He’s a man.  I know these hill-people, and like every other Englishman who has served among them, I love them—­knowing their faults.  Shere Ali has the faults of the Pathan, or some of them.  He has their vanity; he has, if you like, their fanaticism.  But he’s a man.  He’s flattered and petted like a lap-dog, he’s played with like a toy.  Well, he’s neither a lap-dog nor a toy, and he takes the flattery and the petting seriously.  He thinks it’s meant, and he behaves accordingly.  What, then?  The toy is thrown down on the ground, the lap-dog is kicked into the corner.  But he’s not a lap-dog, he’s not a toy.  He’s a man.  He has a man’s resentments, a man’s wounded heart, a man’s determination not to submit to flattery one moment and humiliation the next.  So he strikes.  He tries to take the white, soft, pretty thing which has been dangled before his eyes and snatched away—­he tries to take her by force and fails.  He goes back to his own people, and strikes.  Do you blame him?  Would you rather he sat down and grumbled and bragged of his successes, and took to drink, as more than one down south has done?  Perhaps so.  It would be more comfortable if he did.  But which of the pictures do you admire?  Which of the two is the better man?  For me, the man who strikes—­even if I have to go up into his country and exact the penalty afterwards.  Shere Ali is one of the best of the Princes.  But he has been badly treated and so he must suffer.”

Ralston repeated his conclusion with a savage irony.  “That’s the whole truth.  He’s one of the best of them.  Therefore he doesn’t take bad treatment with a servile gratitude.  Therefore he must suffer still more.  But the fault in the beginning was not his.”

Thus it fell to Ralston to explain, twenty-six years later, the saying of a long-forgotten Political Officer which had seemed so dark to Colonel Dewes when it was uttered in the little fort in Chiltistan.  There was a special danger for the best in the upbringing of the Indian princes in England.