and
listen, for I am very tired." A smile came upon his face. "Do you
remember Linforth's letters? How that phrase came again and again:
'I am very tired.'"

The Doctor arranged the pillows underneath his shoulders, and then
Luffe said:

"All right. I shall do now."

He waited until the Doctor had gone from the room and continued:

"I am not going to talk to you about the Fort. The defence is safe in
your hands, so long as defence is possible. Besides, if it falls it's not
a great thing. The troops will come up and trample down Wafadar Nazim and
Abdulla Mahommed. They are not the danger. The road will go on again,
even though Linforth's dead. No, the man whom I am afraid of is--the son
of the Khan."

Dewes stared, and then said in a soothing voice:

"He will be looked after."

"You think my mind's wandering," continued Luffe. "It never was clearer
in my life. The Khan's son is a boy a week old. Nevertheless I tell you
that boy is the danger in Chiltistan. The father--we know him. A good
fellow who has lost all the confidence of his people. There is hardly an
adherent of his who genuinely likes him; there's hardly a man in this
Fort who doesn't believe that he wished to sell his country to the
British. I should think he is impossible here in the future. And everyone
in Government House knows it. We shall do the usual thing, I have no
doubt--pension him off, settle him down comfortably outside the borders
of Chiltistan, and rule the country as trustee for his son--until the son
comes of age."

Dewes realised surely enough that Luffe was in possession of his
faculties, but he thought his anxiety exaggerated.

"You are looking rather far ahead, aren't you, sir?" he asked.

Luffe smiled.

"Twenty-one years. What are twenty-one years to India? My dear Dewes!"

He was silent. It seemed as though he were hesitating whether he would
say a word more to this Major who in India talked of twenty-one years as
a long span of time. But there was no one else to whom he could confide
his fears. If Dewes was not brilliant, he was at all events all that
there was.

"I wish I was going to live," he cried in a low voice of exasperation. "I
wish I could last just long enough to travel down to Calcutta and _make_
them listen to me. But there's no hope of it. You must do what you can,
Dewes, but very likely they won't pay any attention to you. Very likely
you'll believe me wrong yourself, eh? Poor old Luffe, a man with a bee in