Silent and peaceful it lay, like a dream of past greatness; the city, incalculable ages ago, of proud Hindu warriors and earth-spurning priests; the capital, in later years, and the stronghold of Moslem dominion; the city swept by wave after wave of revolution, sacked, devastated, shifted hither and thither over the plain; but never destroyed; to-day the city of a shadow; to-morrow, what? As he gazed into the tranquil plain, he felt his soul shuddering within him. Grey antiquity seemed to be throwing its arms about him and pressing out his life. He panted for breath like one stifled. What was he, and his people, with all their greatness, what--what were they? Time, that, like the fabled monster devouring its own children, moves forward irresistibly, had brought them into being, and Time, when their days ran out, would thrust them from the path of the living. Or was Time also an illusion--a shadow thrown by shadows on the whiteness of eternity? Did nothing really exist? Nothing--the awful word echoed through his brain, like the knell of a dying faith. He groaned and pressed his hands together. Hark! What was that? 'Is anyone there?' he said, looking round him. He saw no one; but a voice answered, 'I am here.' 'Who are you?' said Tom. 'The same who spoke to you before. I came to you with your inheritance. You ask if there is a reality. I tell you that there is.' 'Then, in the name of Heaven, where is it to be found?' 'Listen!' said the voice. 'You are like many others who search afar off for the thing that is close at hand. Look within; not without. It is there that you will find reality, for you carry it about with you. You, not your body, but the self that animates the body, are the reality of which you are in search. Know this and you are free, but you cannot yet.' 'Why cannot I?' 'Because for the good of others you are bound to action. But be of good cheer! Give yourself to the influences that are carrying you along. Resist the solicitations of sense, and, in time to come, the knowledge that makes free shall dawn upon you.' Whether it was a voice outside of himself or a mere colloquy between contending trains of thought he could not tell. Little could he have imagined meanwhile that here, where he had stood, dreaming of the past, here, where the son of Baber and the father of Akbar slept, the last of his race would hide as fugitives, and that thence they would be taken to imprisonment and death by a rough English soldier, with a few troopers at his heels. Verily Time devoureth its offspring! Tom's next place of rest was Meerut, a large military station about forty miles from Delhi. It was afternoon when the cavalcade arrived. The camp was pitched in a little mango-tope near the native town, and in the evening--such an evening as is common in North India in winter, when the air is crisp and the sky cloudless--Tom, who was in European dress, mounted an Arab pony and rode into the station.