of joy into his eyes. After all,
then, this time he was not to be disappointed.

"I wanted you to come to Peshawur straight from Bombay six months ago,"
Ralston went on. "But I counted without the Indian Government. They
brought you out to India, at my special request, for a special purpose,
and then, when they had got you, they turned you over to work which
anyone else could have done. So six months have been wasted. But that's
their little way."

"You have special work for me?" said Linforth quietly enough, though his
heart was beating quickly in his breast. An answer came which still
quickened its beatings.

"Work that you alone can do," Ralston replied gravely. But he was a man
who had learned to hope for little, and to expect discouragements as his
daily bread, and he added:

"That is, if you can do it."

Linforth did not answer at once. He was leaning with his elbows on the
parapet, and he raised a hand to the side of his face, that side on which
Ralston stood. And so he remained, shutting himself in with his thoughts,
and trying to think soberly. But his head whirled. Below him lay the city
of Peshawur. Behind him the plains came to an end, and straight up from
them, like cliffs out of the sea, rose the dark hills, brown and grey and
veined with white. Here on this tower of Northern India, the long dreams,
dreamed for the first time on the Sussex Downs, and nursed since in every
moment of leisure--in Alpine huts in days of storm, in his own quarters
at Chatham--had come to their fulfilment.

"I have lived for this work," he said in a low voice which shook ever so
little, try as he might to quiet it. "Ever since I was a boy I have lived
for it, and trained myself for it. It is the Road."

Linforth's evident emotion came upon Ralston as an unexpected thing. He
was carried back suddenly to his own youth, and was surprised to
recollect that he, too, had once cherished great plans. He saw himself
as he was to-day, and, side by side with that disillusioned figure, he
saw himself as he had been in his youth. A smile of friendliness came
over his face.

"If I had shut my eyes," he said, "I should have thought it was your
father who was speaking."

Linforth turned quickly to Ralston.

"My father. You knew him?"

"Yes."

"I never did," said Dick regretfully.

Ralston nodded his head and continued:

"Twenty-six years ago we were here in Peshawur together. We came up on
to the top of this tower, as everyon