“Very well.  I told you I learned something from the lady who was with me which it was good for me to know.  I saw something which it was good for me to see.  Good—­yes, but not pleasant either to know or see.  There was a young Prince in England then.  He dined in high places and afterwards supped at the Savoy with the coryphees; and both in the high places and among the coryphees his jewels had made him welcome.  This is truth I am telling you.  He was a boaster.  Well, after supper that night he threw a girl down the stairs.  Never mind what she was—­she was of the white ruling race, she was of the race that rules in India, he comes back to India and insolently boasts.  Do you approve?  Do you think that good?”

“I think it’s horrible,” exclaimed Dewes.

“Well, I have done,” said Luffe.  “This youngster is to go to Oxford.  Unhappiness and the distrust of his own people will be the best that can come of it, while ruin and disasters very well may.  There are many ways of disaster.  Suppose, for instance, this boy were to turn out a strong man.  Do you see?”

Dewes nodded his head.

“Yes, I see,” he answered, and he answered so because he saw that Luffe had come to the end of his strength.  His voice had weakened, he lay with his eyes sunk deep in his head and a leaden pallor upon his face, and his breath laboured as he spoke.

“I am glad,” replied Luffe, “that you understand.”

But it was not until many years had passed that Dewes saw and understood the trouble which was then stirring in Luffe’s mind.  And even then, when he did see and understand, he wondered how much Luffe really had foreseen.  Enough, at all events, to justify his reputation for sagacity.  Dewes went out from the bedroom and climbed up on to the roof of the Fort.  The sun was up, the day already hot, and would have been hotter, but that a light wind stirred among the almond trees in the garden.  The leaves of those trees now actually brushed against the Fort walls.  Five weeks ago there had been bare stems and branches.  Suddenly a rifle cracked, a little puff of smoke rose close to a boulder on the far side of the river, a bullet sang in the air past Dewes’ head.  He ducked behind the palisade of boards.  Another day had come.  For another day the flag, manufactured out of some red cloth, a blue turban and some white cotton, floated overhead.  Meanwhile, somewhere among the passes, the relieving force was already on the march.

Late that afternoon Luffe died, and his body was buried in the Fort.  He had done his work.  For two days afterwards the sound of a battle was heard to the south, the siege was raised, and in the evening the Brigadier-General in Command rode up to the gates and found a tired and haggard group of officers awaiting him.  They received him without cheers or indeed any outward sign of rejoicing.  They waited in a dead silence, like beaten and dispirited men.  They were beginning to pay the price of their five weeks’ siege.