e jigging of a waltz tune and the sound of laughter, while far in
the north the cliffs of the pass framed a dark blue cleft where the
stars shone. George drew in great draughts of the cool, fresh air. "I
wish I was coming with you," he said wistfully.

"You'll be in time enough to-morrow," said Lewis. "I wish you'd give
him all the information you can about the place, Thwaite. He's an
ignorant beggar. See that he remembers to bring food and matches. The
guns are the only things I can promise he won't forget."

Then he rode off, the little beast bucking excitedly at the patches of
moonlight, and the two men walked back to the house.

"Hope he comes back all right," said Thwaite.

"He's too good a man to throw away."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE ROAD TO FORZA

The road ran in a straight line through the valley of dry rocks, a dull,
modern road, engineered and macadamized up to the edge of the hills.
The click of hoofs raised echoes in the silence, for in all the great
valley, in the chain of pools in the channel, the acres of sun-dried
stone, the granite rocks, the tangle of mountain scrub, there seemed no
life of bird or beast. It was a strange, deathly stillness, and
overhead the purple sky, sown with a million globes of light, seemed so
near and imminent that the glen for the moment was but a vast jewel-lit
cavern, and the sky a fretted roof which spanned the mountains.

For the first time Lewis felt the East. Hitherto he had been unable to
see anything in his errand but its futility. A stupider man, with a
sharp, practical brain, would have taken himself seriously and come to
Bardur with an intent and satisfied mind. He would have assumed the air
of a diplomatist, have felt the dignity of his mission, and in success
and failure have borne himself with self-confidence. But to Lewis the
business which loomed serious in England, at Bardur took on the colour
of comedy. He felt his impotence, he was touched insensibly by the easy
content of the place. Frontier difficulties seemed matters for romance
and comic opera; and Bardur resolved itself into an English suburb, all
tea-parties and tennis. But at times an austere conscience jogged him
to remembrance, and in one such fitful craving for action and enterprise
he had found this errand. Now at last, astride the little Kashmir pony,
with his face to the polestar and the hills, he felt the mystery of a
strange world, and his work assumed a tinge of the adventurer. This was