He was now so engrossed with the preparations for the term which was to begin to-morrow that for some while the footsteps overhead did not attract his attention.  When he did hear them he just lifted his head, listened for a moment or two, lit his pipe and went on with his work.

But the sounds continued.  Backwards and forwards from the fireplace to the door, the footsteps came and went—­without haste and without cessation; stealthily regular; inhumanly light.  Their very monotony helped them to pass as unnoticed as the ticking of a clock.  Mr. Pollard continued the preparation of his class-work for a full hour, and only when the dusk was falling, and it was becoming difficult for him to see what he was writing, did he lean back in his chair and stretch his arms above his head with a sigh of relief.

Then once more he became aware of the footsteps overhead.  He rose and rang the bell.

“Who is that walking up and down the drawingroom, Evans?” he asked of the butler.

The butler threw back his head and listened.

“I don’t know, sir,” he replied.

“Those footsteps have been sounding like that for more than an hour.”

“For more than an hour?” Evans repeated.  “Then I am afraid, sir, it’s the new young gentleman from India.”

Arthur Pollard started.

“Has he been waiting up there alone all this time?” he exclaimed.  “Why in the world wasn’t I told?”

“You were told, sir,” said Evans firmly but respectfully.  “I came into the study here and told you, and you answered ‘All right, Evans.’  But I had my doubts, sir, whether you really heard or not.”

Mr. Pollard hardly waited for the end of the explanation.  He hurried out of the room and sprang up the stairs.  He had arranged purposely for the young Prince to come to the house a day before term began.  He was likely to be shy, ill-at-ease and homesick, among so many strange faces and unfamiliar ways.  Moreover, Mr. Pollard wished to become better acquainted with the boy than would be easily possible once the term was in full swing.  For he was something more of an experiment than the ordinary Indian princeling from a State well under the thumb of the Viceroy and the Indian Council.  This boy came of the fighting stock in the north.  To leave him tramping about a strange drawing-room alone for over an hour was not the best possible introduction to English ways and English life.  Mr. Pollard opened the door and saw a slim, tall boy, with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the floor, walking up and down in the gloom.

“Shere Ali,” he said, and he held out his hand.  The boy took it shyly.

“You have been waiting here for some time,” Mr. Pollard continued, “I am sorry.  I did not know that you had come.  You should have rung the bell.”

“I was not lonely,” Shere Ali replied.  “I was taking a walk.”

“Yes, so I gathered,” said the master with a smile.  “Rather a long walk.”