'A most laudable ambition, I'm sure,' he replied drily. 'Budlu only wanted to know, Miss Drummond, if _Jân-Ali-shân_ was going back to his grave to-night; for if not, it would be better to leave the cemetery gate open--he usually locks it at sundown.' '_Jân-Ali-shân_!' she echoed aghast. 'He can't call that wretched creature--he can't think----' Jack Raymond interrupted her. 'I don't know very much about the possibilities or impossibilities of India, though I've lived in it for twenty years; but I do happen to know that half Nushapore has a sneaking idea that the wretched creature is, well, a sort of emanation of the great John Ellison. He has the same strain, you see, of sheer devilry, pluck, ability, call it what you will--the something that makes its mark on Eastern people. And they think he comes for revenge, because, as you heard him say, he is in such a mortal funk of being cheated out of "an 'ero's grave" if he dies away from Nushapore, that he always comes back when there's trouble about. The natives are quick to notice such things. Well, he may have his tens of thousands this year.' 'You mean that the plague will come?' 'And a row, too, if we aren't careful.' Jerry's hand tightened on Jack Raymond's. 'A weal wow, sir, with sieges and everything?' 'Sieges? Well, I don't know. What do you want sieges for, young man?' The child's face showed confident. 'Because I want an 'ero's grave of my vewy own, like what that man's got. An' it wouldn't be dog-in-the-mangery, like two pieces of cake, Miss Dwummond, 'cos I could lend it to other people till I weally did want it; but if it was my vewy own, you see'--he hesitated, then a sudden comprehension seemed to come to him--'then I could fight all the vewy biggest big boys wifout caring. For I could pop into my gwave an' laugh at 'em, even if I was licked--'cos--'cos I should have won weally--shouldn't I, sir?' The moon shone clear on the ruins before them, and all around them, hidden in the shadows of the trees, lay the little world which forty years before had defied a big one. Through the still silence came only that twittering of birds fighting for a roosting-place, until the man's voice said evenly-- 'It is a question, Jerry, "_how far high failure overleaps the bound of low successes_." Ask Miss Drummond; I don't know.' The answering woman's voice came swiftly. 'Surely this is no place for an Englishman to talk of failure!' He turned sharply. So this girl was at it now; she too wanted to rouse him; she had heard the story--or part of it. 'I almost wish it were,' he answered bitterly; 'then we might forget it. But the glory of it gets to our heads--we come back to it again and again.' He stopped abruptly, for a tenor voice rose in sweet undertones upon that twittering of birds-- 'There is a green hill far away, Outside a city wall.'