As the procession came abreast of him a little brown hand was thrust out from the curtains, and the bearers and the rabble behind came to a halt.  A man in a rough brown homespun cloak, with a beggar’s bowl attached to his girdle, came to the side of the litter, and thence went across to Ralston.

“Your Highness, the Goddess Devi has a word for your ear alone.”  Ralston, with a shrug of his shoulders, walked his horse up to the side of the litter and bent down his head.  The lady spoke through the curtains in a whisper.

“Your Excellency has been very kind to me, and allowed me to leave Peshawur with a procession, guarding the streets so that I might pass in safety and with great honour.  Therefore I make a return.  There is a matter which troubles your Excellency.  You ask yourself the why and the wherefore, and there is no answer.  But the danger grows.”

Ralston’s thoughts flew out towards Chiltistan.  Was it of that country she was speaking?

“Well?” he asked.  “Why does the danger grow?”

“Because bags of grain and melons were sent,” she replied, “and the message was understood.”

She waved her hand again, and the bearers of the litter stepped forward on their march through the cantonment.  Ralston rode up the hill to his home, wondering what in the world was the meaning of her oracular words.  It might be that she had no meaning—­that was certainly a possibility.  She might merely be keeping up her pose as a divinity.  On the other hand, she had been so careful to speak in a low whisper, lest any should overhear.

“Some melons and bags of grain,” he said to himself.  “What message could they convey?  And who sent them?  And to whom?”

He wrote that night to the Resident at Kohara, on the chance that he might be able to throw some light upon the problem.

“Have you heard anything of a melon and a bag of grain?” he wrote.  “It seems an absurd question, but please make inquiries.  Find out what it all means.”

The messenger carried the letter over the Malakand Pass and up the road by Dir, and in due time an answer was returned.  Ralston received the answer late one afternoon, when the light was failing, and, taking it over to the window, read it through.  Its contents fairly startled him.

“I have made inquiries,” wrote Captain Phillips, the Resident, “as you wished, and I have found out that some melons and bags of grain were sent by Shere Ali’s orders a few weeks ago as a present to one of the chief Mullahs in the town.”

Ralston was brought to a stop.  So it was Shere Ali, after all, who was at the bottom of the trouble.  It was Shere Ali who had sent the present, and had sent it to one of the Mullahs.  Ralston looked back upon the little dinner party, whereby he had brought Hatch and Shere Ali together.  Had that party been too successful, he wondered?  Had it achieved more than he had wished to bring about?  He turned in doubt to the letter which he held.