bove its playing-grounds and gives to the princes and the chiefs of
Rajputana a modern public school for the education of their sons.

From the roof top of the college tower Linforth looked to the city
huddled under the Taragarh Hill, and dimly made out the high archway of
the mosque. He turned back to the broad playing-fields at his feet where
a cricket match was going on. There was the true solution of the great
problem, he thought.

"Here at Ajmere," he said to himself, "Shere Ali could have learned what
the West had to teach him. Had he come here he would have been spared the
disappointments, and the disillusions. He would not have fallen in with
Violet Oliver. He would have married and ruled in his own country."

As it was, he had gone instead to Eton and to Oxford, and Linforth must
needs search for him over there in the huddled city under the Taragarh
Hill. Ralston's Pathan was even then waiting for Linforth at the bottom
of the tower.

"Sir," he said, making a low salaam when Linforth had descended, "His
Highness Shere Ali is now in Ajmere. Every morning between ten and eleven
he is to be found in a balcony above the well at the back of the Dargah
Mosque, and to-morrow I will lead you to him."

"Every morning!" said Linforth. "What does he do upon this balcony?"

"He watches the well below, and the water-carriers descending with their
jars," said the Pathan, "and he talks with his friends. That is all."

"Very well," said Linforth. "To-morrow we will go to him."

He passed up the steps under the blue portico a little before the hour on
the next morning, and entered a stone-flagged court which was thronged
with pilgrims. On each side of the archway a great copper vat was raised
upon stone steps, and it was about these two vats that the crowd
thronged. Linforth and his guide could hardly force their way through. On
the steps of the vats natives, wrapped to the eyes in cloths to save
themselves from burns, stood emptying the caldrons of boiling ghee. And
on every side Linforth heard the name of Shere Ali spoken in praise.

"What does it mean?" he asked of his guide, and the Pathan replied:

"His Highness the Prince has made an offering. He has filled those
caldrons with rice and butter and spices, as pilgrims of great position
and honour sometimes do. The rice is cooked in the vats, and so many jars
are set aside for the strangers, while the people of Indrakot have
hereditary rights to what is left. Sir, i