bright, indeed, that Shere Ali could see upon the water of the river below the low cliff on which his camp fire was lit a trembling golden path made by the rays of a planet.  And as he sat, unexpectedly in the hush a boy with a clear, sweet voice began to sing from the darkness behind him.  The melody was plaintive and sweet; a few notes of a pipe accompanied him; and as Shere Ali listened in this high valley of the Himalayas on a summer’s night, the music took hold upon him and wrung his heart.  The yearning for all that he had left behind became a pain almost beyond endurance.  The days of his boyhood and his youth went by before his eyes in a glittering procession.  His school life, his first summer term at Oxford, the Cherwell with the shadows of the branches overhead dappling the water, the strenuous week of the Eights, his climbs with Linforth, and, above all, London in June, a London bright with lilac and sunshine and the fair faces of women, crowded in upon his memory.  He had been steadily of late refusing to remember, but the sweet voice and the plaintive melody had caught him unawares.  The ghosts of his dead pleasures trooped out and took life and substance.  Particular hours were lived through again—­a motor ride alone with Violet Oliver to Pangbourne, a dinner on the lawn outside the inn, the drive back to London in the cool of the evening.  It all seemed very far away to-night.  Shere Ali sat late beside his fire, nor when he went into his tent did he close his eyes.

The next morning he rode among orchards bright with apricots and mulberries, peaches and white grapes, and in another day he looked down from a high cliff, across which the road was carried on a scaffolding, upon the town of Kohara and the castle of his father rising in terraces upon a hill behind.  The nobles and their followers came out to meet him with courteous words and protestations of good will.  But they looked him over with curious and not too friendly eyes.  News had gone before Shere Ali that the young Prince of Chiltistan was coming to Kohara wearing the dress of the White People.  They saw that the news was true, but no word or comment was uttered in his hearing.  Joking and laughing they escorted him to the gates of his father’s palace.  Thus Shere Ali at the last had come home to Kohara.  Of the life which he lived there he was to tell something to Violet Oliver.

CHAPTER XIV

IN THE COURTYARD

The investiture was over, and the guests, thronging from the Hall of Audience, came out beneath arches and saw the whole length of the great marble court spread before them.  A vast canopy roofed it in, and a soft dim light pervaded it.  To those who came from the glitter of the ceremonies it brought a sense of coolness and of peace.  From the arches a broad flight of steps led downwards to the floor, where water gleamed darkly in a marble basin.  Lilies floated upon its surface, and marble paths