They were both young, and they talked with the bright and simple faith in their ideals which is the great gift of youth.  An older man might have laughed if he had heard, but had there been an older man in the hut to overhear them, he would have heard nothing.  They were alone, save for their guides, and the single purpose for which—­as they then thought—­their lives were to be lived out made that long day short as a summer’s night.

“The Government will thank us when the work is done,” said Shere Ali enthusiastically.

“The Government will be in no hurry to let us begin,” replied Linforth drily.  “There is a Resident at your father’s court.  Your father is willing, and yet there’s not a coolie on the road.”

“Yes, but you will get your way,” and again confidence rang in the voice of the Chilti prince.

“It will not be I,” answered Linforth.  “It will be the Road.  The power of the Road is beyond the power of any Government.”

“Yes, I remember and I understand.”  Shere Ali lit his pipe and lay back among the straw.  “At first I did not understand what the words meant.  Now I know.  The power of the Road is great, because it inspires men to strive for its completion.”

“Or its mastery,” said Linforth slowly.  “Perhaps one day on the other side of the Hindu Kush, the Russians may covet it—­and then the Road will go on to meet them.”

“Something will happen,” said Shere Ali.  “At all events something will happen.”

The shadows of the evening found them still debating what complication might force the hand of those in authority.  But always they came back to the Russians and a movement of troops in the Pamirs.  Yet unknown to both of them the something else had already happened, though its consequences were not yet to be foreseen.  A storm had delayed them for a day in a hut upon the Meije.  They went out of the hut.  The sky had cleared; and in the sunset the steep buttress of the Promontoire ran sharply up to the Great Wall; above the wall the small square patch of ice sloped to the base of the Grand Pic and beyond the deep gap behind that pinnacle the long serrated ridge ran out to the right, rising and falling, to the Doight de Dieu.

There were some heavy icicles overhanging the Great Wall, and Linforth looked at them anxiously.  There was also still a little snow upon the rocks.

“It will be possible,” said Peter, cheerily.  “Tomorrow night we shall sleep in La Grave.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said his brother.

They walked round the hut, looked for a little while down the stony valley des Etancons, with its one green patch up which they had toiled from La Berarde the day before, and returned to watch the purple flush of the sunset die off the crags of the Meije.  But the future they had planned was as a vision before their eyes, and even along the high cliffs of the Dauphine the road they were to make seemed to wind and climb.