At the end of the alley he came to a doorway in a high wall.  There was no door.  He stood on the threshold of the doorway and looked in.  He looked into a court open to the sky, and the seven horses and the monotonous voice were explained to him.  There were seven young men—­nobles of Chiltistan, as Phillips knew from their chogas of velvet and Chinese silk—­gathered in the court.  They were kneeling with their backs towards him and the doorway, so that not one of them had noticed his approach.  They were facing a small rough-hewn obelisk of stone which stood at the head of a low mound of earth at the far end of the court.  Six of them were grouped in a sort of semi-circle, and the seventh, a man clad from head to foot in green robes, knelt a little in advance and alone.  But from none of the seven nobles did the voice proceed.  In front of them all knelt an old man in the brown homespun of the people.  Phillips, from the doorway, could see his great beard wagging as he prayed, and knew him for one of the incendiary priests of Chiltistan.

The prayer was one with which Phillips was familiar:  The Day was at hand; the infidels would be scattered as chaff; the God of Mahommed was besought to send the innumerable company of his angels and to make his faithful people invulnerable to wounds.  Phillips could have gone on with the prayer himself, had the Mullah failed.  But it was not the prayer which held him rooted to the spot, but the setting of the prayer.

The scene was in itself strange and significant enough.  These seven gaily robed youths assembled secretly in a lonely and desolate ruin nine miles from Kohara had come thither not merely for prayer.  The prayer would be but the seal upon a compact, the blessing upon an undertaking where life and death were the issues.  But there was something more; and that something more gave to the scene in Phillips’ eyes a very startling irony.  He knew well how quickly in these countries the actual record of events is confused, and how quickly any tomb, or any monument becomes a shrine before which “the faithful” will bow and make their prayer.  But that here of all places, and before this tomb of all tombs, the God of the Mahommedans should be invoked—­this was life turning playwright with a vengeance.  It needed just one more detail to complete the picture and the next moment that detail was provided.  For Phillips moved.

His boot rattled upon a loose stone.  The prayer ceased, the worshippers rose abruptly to their feet and turned as one man towards the doorway.  Phillips saw, face to face, the youth robed in green, who had knelt at the head of his companions.  It was Shere Ali, the Prince of Chiltistan.

Phillips advanced at once into the centre of the group.  He was wise enough not to hold out his hand lest it should be refused.  But he spoke as though he had taken leave of Shere Ali only yesterday.

“So your Highness has returned?”