esident at Kohara admitted the danger. Every
despatch he sent to Peshawur pointed to the likelihood of trouble. But he
too was at fault. Unrest was evident, the cause of it quite obscure. But
what was hidden from Government House in Peshawur and the Old Mission
House at Kohara was already whispered in the bazaars. There among the
thatched booths which have their backs upon the brink of the
water-channel in the great square, men knew very well that Shere Ali was
the cause, though Shere Ali knew nothing of it himself. One of those
queer little accidents possible in the East had happened within the last
few weeks. A trifling gift had been magnified into a symbol and a
message, and the message had run through Chiltistan like fire through a
dry field of stubble. And then two events occurred in Peshawur which gave
to Ralston the key of the mystery.

The first was the arrival in that city of a Hindu lady from Gujerat who
had lately come to the conclusion that she was a reincarnation of the
Goddess Devi. She arrived in great pomp, and there was some trouble in
the streets as the procession passed through to the temple which she had
chosen as her residence. For the Hindus, on the one hand, firmly believed
in her divinity. The lady came of a class which, held in dishonour in the
West, had its social position and prestige in India. There was no reason
in the eyes of the faithful why she should say she was the Goddess Devi
if she were not. Therefore they lined the streets to acclaim her coming.
The Mohammedans, on the other hand, Afghans from the far side of the
Khyber, men of the Hassan and the Aka and the Adam Khel tribes, Afridis
from Kohat and Tirah and the Araksai country, any who happened to be in
that wild and crowded town, turned out, too--to keep order, as they
pleasantly termed it, when their leaders were subsequently asked for
explanations. In the end a good many heads were broken before the lady
was safely lodged in her temple. Nor did the trouble end there. The
presence of a reincarnated Devi at once kindled the Hindus to fervour and
stimulated to hostility against them the fanatical Mohammedans. Futteh
Ali Shah, a merchant, a municipal councillor and a landowner of some
importance, headed a deputation of elderly gentlemen who begged Ralston
to remove the danger from the city.

Danger there was, as Ralston on his morning rides through the streets
could not but understand. The temple was built in the corner of an open