lt the rose-red City; challenging the desert, as Canute the sea;
saying, in terms of stone and mortar, 'Here shall thy proud waves be
stayed!' Nearing the fortified gateway, Roy noted how every inch of flat
surface was silkily powdered, every opening silted with sand. Would it
rest with desert or city, he wondered, the ultimate victory of the last
word...?

Close against the ramparts, sand and dust were blown into a deep drift;
or was it a deserted pile of rags----? Suddenly, with a sick sensation,
he saw the rags heave and stir. Arms emerged--if you could call them
arms--belonging to pinched, shadowy faces. And from that human dust-heap
came a quavering wail, "Maharaj! Maharaj!"

"What _is_ it, Bishun Singh?" he asked sharply of the _sais_, trotting
at his stirrup.

"Only the famine, Hazur. Not a big trouble this year, they say. But from
the villages these come crawling to the city, believing the Maharaj has
plenty, and will give."

"Does he give?"

Bishun Singh's gesture seemed to deprecate undue curiosity. "The Maharaj
is great, but the people are like flies. If their Karma is good, they
find a few handfuls; if evil--they die."

Roy said no more. That simple statement was conclusive as a dropped
stone. But, on reaching the gateway, he scattered a handful of loose
corns.

Instantly a cry went up: "He gives money for food! _Jai dea
Maharaj!_"[7] Not merely arms, but entire skeletons emerged, seething,
scrambling, with hands wasted to mere claws. A few of the boldest caught
at Roy's stirrup; whereat Bishun Singh brushed them off, as if they were
flies indeed.

Unresisting, they tottered and fell one against another, like ninepins:
and Roy, hating the man, turned sharply away. But rebuke was futile. One
could _do_ nothing. It was that which galled him. One could only pass
on; mentally brushing them aside--like Bishun Singh.

* * * * *

Spectres vanished, however, once he and Suraj were absorbed into the
human kaleidoscope of the vast main street, paved with wide strips of
hewn stone; one half of it sun-flooded; one half in shadow. The colour
and movement; the vista of pink-washed houses speckled with white
florets; the gay muslins, the small turbans and inimitable swagger of
the Rajput-Sun-descended, re-awakened in him those gleams of ancestral
memory that had so vividly beset him at Chitor. Sights and sounds and
smells--the pungent mingling of spices and dust and animals--assa