field-glass. He had lately recovered from a stroke of paralysis, and
was (I am told) the wreck of his old self; but the old fire lived in the
ashes. He sat there, tall, lean, upright as a ramrod, with his eyes
turned from the covert and gazing straight in front, over his horse's
ears, on the rushing Meavy. He had forgotten the hounds; his care for
his guests was at an end; and I wondered what thoughts, what memories of
the East, possessed him. There is always a loneliness about a great
man, don't you think? But I have never felt one to be so terribly--yes,
terribly--alone as the Rajah was that morning among his guests and the
Devonshire tors.

"Every inch a king," said a voice at my elbow, and a little man settled
himself down on the turf beside me. I set down my glasses with a start.
He was a spare dry fellow of about fifty, dressed in what I took for the
working suit of a mechanic. Certainly he did not belong to the moor.
He wore no collar, but a dingy yellow handkerchief knotted about his
throat, and both throat and face were seamed with wrinkles--so thickly
seamed that at first glance you might take them for tattoo-marks; but I
had time for a second, for without troubling to meet my eyes he nodded
towards the Rajah.

"I've cut a day's work and travelled out from Plymouth to get a sight of
him; and I've a wife will pull my hair out when I get home and she finds
I haven't been to the docks to-day; and I've had no breakfast but thirty
grains of opium; but he's worth it."

"Thirty grains of opium!" I stared at him, incredulous. He did not
turn, but, still with his eyes on the valley below us, stretched out a
hand. It's fingers were gnarled, and hooked like a bird's claw, and on
the little finger a ruby flashed in the morning sunlight--not a large