,
sending ignominious trickles down his spine. Walls, window slabs, door
beams--the vast building was encrusted with them from base to summit; a
nightmare of prancing, writhing, gesticulating unrest; only one still
face repeated at intervals--the Great God holding the wheel of Law....

Never had Roy more keenly appreciated the company of Terry, who, in
spite of a Celtic pedigree, was not enjoying this prolonged practical
joke.

It was relief unspeakable to emerge at last, into full light and clean
sweet morning air. For the ninth storey, under the dome, was arcaded on
all four sides and refreshingly innocent of decoration. Not a posturing
figure to be seen. Nothing but restful slabs of polished stone. There
was meaning in this also--could one catch the trend of the builder's
thought.

On a slab near an arcaded opening Roy sat gratefully down; while Terry,
bored to extinction with the whole affair, curled himself up in a
shadowed corner and went fast asleep. "Unfriendly little beast," thought
Roy; and promptly forgot his existence.

For below him, in the silvery moonlight of morning, lay Chitor; her
shattered arches and battlements, her temples and palaces dwarfed to
mere footstools for the gods. And beyond, and again beyond, lay the
naked strength and desolation of northern Rajputana--white with
poppy-fields, velvet-dark with scrub, jagged with outcrops of volcanic
rock; the gaunt warrior country, battered by centuries of struggle and
slaughter; making calamity a whetstone for courage; saying, in effect,
to friend and enemy, 'Take me or leave me. You cannot change me.'

The Border had fascinated Roy. The Himalayas had subjugated him. But
this strong unlovely region of rock and sand, of horses and swords, of
chivalry and cruelty and daring, irresistibly laid siege to his heart;
gave him the authentic sense of being one with it all.

On a day, in that summer of blessed memory, his mother had almost
promised him that, once again she would revisit India if only for the
joy of making a pilgrimage with him to Chitor. And here he sat on the
summit of Khumba Rana's Tower--alone. That was the way of life....

Gradually there stole over him a great weariness of body and spirit;
pure reaction from the uplift of his strange adventure. His lids drooped
heavily. In another moment he would have fallen sound asleep; but he
saved himself, just in time. When he craved the thing, it eluded him;
now, undesired, it assailed him. But