A minute after the sun was no longer in Pidar Narâyan's eyes. As he had said, they were fighting lengthwise to the ridge; and he drew back, choosing his ground, until under his feet he felt the dead marigolds, the withered basil leaves that lay about the upright stone,--that strange pedestal on which the star-shaped pyx stood as on an altar, glittering in the sun-rays. He seemed to see it, to feel it, standing there between the world below and those faint, far peaks. And the eyes which had seen so much felt they need see no more. "_Sta' alerta, Signor!_" he cried jibingly, flinging himself savagely forward. "And may the Lord have mercy on your soul," he added in a lower tone; as, in an attack which held in it all the wildness, the fire, the passion of his youth, he drove Roshan back a step,--one step down the faint slope on which he had counted. A fierce lunge or two, a swift parry, and then,--then an inch beyond safety--given purposely--yielded room for the _riposte_ he sought from that other rapier. It came with a quick cry of triumph, as Roshan felt that thin, cold steel slide silently on through a dull, faint resistance. A cry that ended in a gasp, as the hand which held the rapier dropped for a second, then flung itself upwards. For Pidar Narâyan had given the _reprise_; and '_L'Addio del Marito_' had done its work. So, for an instant--held upright by the lingering force of the old man's hand--the two stood within a sword's length, their faces glaring at each other,--stern, implacable, the one in death, the other still in life. Then the strength, the life, ebbed; the balance between it and death wavered, and Ninian Bruce, overborne by his enemy's dead weight, sank to his knee, then backwards. But his hand still gripped the rapier. So Roshan Khân's body, as it fell forward, slithered down the sharp blade, sending a little jet of crimson blood backwards, till it stopped with a dull thud upon the hilt. So he lay, face downwards, beside the old man, whose face looked skyward; whose head rested among the withered marigolds and the sweet, dead leaves of the basil, which generations and generations of pilgrims had offered to an unknown wisdom on their way to the "Cradle of the Gods." CHAPTER XXVIII THE TRUTH "And to look at it now," came the Commissioner's rich, round brogue, "you would think butter wouldn't melt in its mouth!" He waved the cigar he was smoking towards Eshwara. It looked sleepier, more sun-saturate than ever, as it lay reflected in the still lagoon between it and the tent in which he was sitting; a double-poled, Commissioner's tent, which two days before had swooped down like an avenging angel with broad white wings to take possession of the just and the unjust in the name of Victoria _Kaiser-i-Hind_.