Afterwards Tom Gregory looked back upon this journey as one of the strangest experiences of his strange and chequered life. As regards outward events there is little to record. Bâl Narîn knew every step of the way. The soldiers, servants, camp-followers, and coolies, of whom the cavalcade consisted, were so well up in their duties, and so hopeful of large reward from the rajah, that they worked with all the regularity and much more than the intelligence of machines. Even the heavens seemed to smile upon the intrepid travellers, for there could be no doubt that the air was less pestilential than is usual at this season, while there were none of those sweeping storms of rain that, in late summer and early autumn, will sometimes make the roads of the Terai impassable. They travelled quietly, so as not to fatigue Grace and Kit, and it took them three days to work across the jungle from the robbers' path, where Bâl Narîn had found the first traces of the fugitives, to the Maharajah's Road. This, of course, was the most difficult and dangerous part of the journey, but they accomplished it safely. There was no talk of fever now, no grumbling about the denseness of the jungle and the fatigue of the way. Bâl Narîn issued the orders for each day, and they were obeyed with joyful alacrity. It would almost seem as if the gladness that had taken possession of the camp since Grace and Kit were found had given it strength and tone. But for all this, and in spite of the kind and gracious face he showed to his followers, the young rajah carried about with him an aching heart. His hope and dream had not been fulfilled. He had saved his love from the last extremity; but for what had he saved her? Sometimes when he saw the wandering horror in her eyes, when he listened to the broken words of pain, which for his sake she tried to repress, when, with a trouble which almost unmanned him, he realised that so it must be as long as she lived, he would say to himself ruefully, that for her it would have been better if in the trance in which he found her in the hut, her gentle spirit had winged its flight from earth. But these were his worst moments. The best times were when, as Kit expressed it, Grace was 'somewhere else.' Then, but for the curious expression of her eyes, the haunting pain that seemed always to be lying in wait for her, she was so quiet and peaceful, so much the Grace of the dear old days, that he could venture to hope for her restoration to health of body and peace of mind.