'Very good, then,' said Creighton, half to himself. 'He can go with the lama, and if Hurree Babu cares to keep an eye on them so much the better. He won't lead the boy into any danger as Mahbub would. Curious--his wish to be an F. R. S. Very human, too. He is best on the Ethnological side--Hurree.' No money and no preferment would have drawn Creighton from his work on the Indian Survey, but deep in his heart also lay the ambition to write 'F. R. S.' after his name. Honours of a sort he knew could be obtained by ingenuity and the help of friends, but, to the best of his belief, nothing save work--papers representing a life of it--took a man into the Society which he had bombarded for years with monographs on strange Asiatic cults and unknown customs. Nine men out of ten would flee from a Royal Society soiree in extremity of boredom; but Creighton was the tenth, and at times his soul yearned for the crowded rooms in easy London where silver-haired, bald-headed gentlemen who know nothing of the Army move among spectroscopic experiments, the lesser plants of the frozen tundras, electric flight-measuring machines, and apparatus for slicing into fractional millimetres the left eye of the female mosquito. By all right and reason, it was the Royal Geographical that should have appealed to him, but men are as chancy as children in their choice of playthings. So Creighton smiled, and thought the better of Hurree Babu, moved by like desires. He dropped the ghost-dagger and looked up at Mahbub. 'How soon can we get the colt from the stable?' said the horse-dealer, reading his eyes. 'Hmm. If I withdraw him by order now--what will he do, think you? I have never before assisted at the teaching of such an one.' 'He will come to me,' said Mahbub promptly. 'Lurgan Sahib and I will prepare him for the Road.' 'So be it, then. For six months he shall run at his choice: but who will be his sponsor?' Lurgan slightly inclined his head. 'He will not tell anything, if that is what you are afraid of, Colonel Creighton.' [Illustration: He crossed his hands on his lap and smiled, as a man who has won Salvation for himself and his beloved.] 'It's only a boy, after all.' 'Ye-es; but first, he has nothing to tell; and secondly, he knows what would happen. Also, he is very fond of Mahbub, and of me a little.' 'Will he draw pay?' demanded the practical horse-dealer. 'Food and water allowance only. Twenty rupees a month.'