as repeated.

"Why?"

The Doctor's confusion increased. He recognised that his delay in
answering only made the answer more difficult to give. It could not be
evaded. He blurted out the truth apologetically.

"Well, you see, we don't give the Victoria Cross to natives."

Shere Ali was silent for a while. He stood with his eyes fixed upon the
tower, his face quite inscrutable.

"Yes, I guessed that would be the reason," he said quietly.

"Well," said his companion uncomfortably, "I expect some day that will
be altered."

Shere Ali shrugged his shoulders, and turned to go down. At the gateway
of the Fort, by the wire bridge, his escort, mounted upon their horses,
waited for him. He climbed into the saddle without a word. He had been
labouring for these last days under a sense of injury, and his thoughts
had narrowed in upon himself. He was thinking. "I, too, then, could never
win that prize." His conviction that he was really one of the White
People, bolstered up as it had been by so many vain arguments, was put to
the test of fact. The truth shone in upon his mind. For here was a
coveted privilege of the White People from which he was debarred, he and
the bheestie and the Sepoy. They were all one, he thought bitterly, to
the White People. The invidious bar of his colour was not to be broken.

"Good-bye," he said, leaning down from his saddle and holding out his
hand. "Thank you very much."

He shook hands with the Doctor and cantered down the road, with a smile
upon his face. But the consciousness of the invidious bar was rankling
cruelly at his heart, and it continued to rankle long after he had swung
round the bend of the road and had lost sight of Chakdara and the
English flag.

He passed through Jandol and climbed the Lowari Pass among the fir trees
and the pines, and on the very summit he met three men clothed in brown
homespun with their hair clubbed at the sides of their heads. Each man
carried a rifle on his back and two of them carried swords besides, and
they wore sandals of grass upon their feet. They were talking as they
went, and they were talking in the Chilti tongue. Shere Ali hailed them
and bade them stop.

"On what journey are you going?" he asked, and one of the three bowed low
and answered him.

"Sir, we are going to Mecca."

"To Mecca!" exclaimed Shere Ali. "How will you ever get to Mecca? Have
you money?"

"Sir, we have each six rupees, and with six rupees a man may reach Mecca
fr