“I wish I could have gone with you as far as the frontier,” he had said to Stratford, “but I daren’t leave the city just now. I believe I am on the brink of discovering a very neat plot between the Scythian agent, who ought to be across the border by this time, but is supposed to be detained by illness at a village only a day’s journey off, and Fath-ud-Din’s adherents. I think I have tracked nearly all the participators, and when I am ready I shall give them a surprise. The plan is, of course, to get rid of me and destroy the English treaty. By the way, I hope you are careful of your copy. Accidents will happen, and if that should be stolen or destroyed, it would be a big score for them. If you should chance to be detained anywhere by sickness or a difficulty in obtaining provisions, you will do well to send on some one you can trust, with ten or twelve well-armed men, to make a dash for Rahmat-Ullah, and put the treaty in safety. Our copy, of course, is safe as long as I am, but no one can tell how long that will be. All Fath-ud-Din’s fortresses are refusing to yield except to force, which is another thing that makes me think they anticipate a speedy return to the old state of affairs, and I shall be obliged to send Rustam Khan with the army to reduce each one in turn. You will have to pass not far from two of them; but if your guides are trustworthy and know their business, they ought to take you by without even coming in sight of them. One of the forts ought to be mine, which makes its resistance all the more irritating. Fath-ud-Din did me out of it with the help of some devilry practised by the old witch whom he keeps to get rid of his friends for him. Perhaps I shall get it back now. Well, good-bye; keep an eye on your guides and a tight hand over your men and the escort, and when you get the welcome you deserve at home, don’t quite forget the man who disappeared.” He shook hands with the rest of the party, and turned away abruptly to begin his ride back to the city. As Georgia looked after him, something of pity rose in her heart. After all, the only tragedies in Kubbet-ul-Haj were not those of the older women with their woful past, and Nur Jahan with her comfortless future. There was tragedy also in the story of the man who for life’s sake had given up all that ennobled life, and who had gained so much that he found was valueless, and lost so much that he now knew was invaluable. Alone in the great cruel faithless city, his only memorial of the visit of his friends the rough tablet which marked Dr Headlam’s grave, his only trustworthy companion the wife whose love he had slighted, his daily occupation the search after any means by which he might succeed in maintaining his position on the slippery height he had reached--there was little reason to envy Jahan Beg.