“Oh—­if you look at it in that light, I have nothing to say.  It has been a very pleasant and interesting excursion to me, and I am rather glad I only broke that fellow’s arm instead of killing him, as you and Shere Ali did your sowars.”

“I don’t know whether I killed him.  I suppose I did.  Poor fellow.  However, he would certainly have killed me.”

“Of course.  No use crying over spilt milk,” I answered.

So we got into the doolies and swung away.  As we neared Simla my friend’s spirits rose, and he chanted wild Persian and Arabic love-songs, and kept up a fire of conversation all day and all night, singing and talking alternately.

“Griggs,” he said, as we approached the end of our journey, “did you have occasion to tell Miss Westonhaugh where I had gone?”

“Yes.  She asked me, and I answered that you had gone to save a man’s life.  She looked very much pleased, I thought, but just then somebody came up, and we did not talk any more about it.  I got your message the evening of the day you left.”

“She looked pleased?”

“Very much.  I remember the colour came into her cheeks.”

“Was she so pale, then?” he asked anxiously.

“Why, yes.  You remember how she looked the night before you left?  She was even paler the next day, but when I said you had gone to do a good deed, the light came into her face for a moment.”

“Do you think she was ill, Griggs?”

“She did not look well, but of course she was anxious about you, and a good deal cut up about your going.”

“No; but did you really think she was ill?” he insisted.

“Oh no, nothing but your going.”

His spirits were gone again, and he said very little more that day.  As we were ascending the last hills, some eight or nine hours from Simla, the moon rose majestically behind us.  It must have been ten o’clock, for she could not have been seen above the notch in the mountains to eastward until she had been risen an hour at least.

“I wonder where they are now, those two,” said Isaacs.

“Shere Ali and Ram Lal?”

“Yes.  They are probably across the borders into Thibet, watching the moon rise from the door of some Buddhist monastery.  I am glad I am not there.”

“Isaacs,” I said, “I would really like to know why you took so much trouble about Shere Ali.  It seems to me you might have procured his liberation in some simpler way, if it was merely an act of charity that you contemplated.”

“Call it anything you like.  I had read about the poor man until my imagination was wrought up, and I could not bear to think of a man so brave and patriotic and at the same time a true believer, lying in the clutches of that old beast of a maharajah.  And as for the method of my procedure, do you realise the complete secrecy of the whole affair?  Do you see that no one but you and I and the Baithopoor people know anything of the transaction?  Do you suppose that I should be tolerated a day in the country if the matter were known?  Above all, what do you imagine Mr. Currie Ghyrkins would think of me if he knew I had been liberating and enriching the worst foe of his little god, Lord Beaconsfield?”