Even in this moment he still controlled them. Nicholson felt that a strong unseen hand held the crowd in that strange silence beneath which rumbled and groaned the growing storm. He had seen dark hands finger the unsheathed knives; he had seen them reluctantly fall away. The hour had not yet come. Nehal Singh waited. For what? For him? The idea seemed absurd, and yet, as Nicholson felt himself being swept on, it took stronger hold upon his mind and his faint hope of success revived. He believed that, once face to face with the prince, he would be able to check the headlong disaster which was bearing down upon them all. They had been friends in a curious unacknowledged way. Nehal Singh would listen to him. He would be made to understand that one adventurer and one heartless woman do not make a nation; that the injury done him was far from irreparable. A low exclamation close at hand roused him from his rapid considerations. He saw that the man who had hold of his horse's bridle had turned and with one outstretched hand was pointing over the heads of the crowd. "Look, Sahib, look!" Nicholson glanced in the direction indicated. They were passing the site of the old Bazaar, now a black, scarred waste of machinery and disembowelled earth over which brooded a death-like quiet. Nicholson remembered vividly the day he had ridden there at Nehal Singh's side. A breathless, eager humanity had worked and slaved beneath the scorching sun, redoubling every effort as the fine commanding presence of the young ruler appeared among them. Then the clank of busy machinery had mingled with the shouted orders of the English overseers, and Nehal Singh had turned to him with a grave pride and happiness. "See what your people have taught my people," he said. "They have taught them to seek their bread from the earth and to leave their dreams. This is only the beginning. The time shall come when they shall stand shoulder to shoulder with their white brethren!" How had the over-sanguine prophecy been fulfilled! The native at Nicholson's side pointed a finger of scorn and anger at the silent, ruined waste. "Devil--English devil!" he said laconically, and continued on his way. Nicholson's lips tightened. His own words came back to him with a new significance: "In a strange country no one is an exception." This Travers, this one unscrupulous fortune-hunter, heedless of everything save his own advancement, had branded them all. He had undone, with the help of a heedless woman, the work of generations of heroic, honest labor. Truly the chain of individual responsibility is a long one!