warring tribes, its dying creeds, its dead languages, its history
sweeping far back into the mists of the unknown. For every problem
of the human mind, every throe of the restless heart of man is worn
old and threadbare in Hindostan, with its very dust compounded of
the wind-blown ashes of dead millions upon millions. Gross vulgar
Gold reigns now as King on the broad savannas where spice plantations
and indigo farms vary the cotton, rice, and sugar fields. Wasted
treasures of dead dynasties gleam out in the ornamentation of the
temples abandoned to the prowling beast of prey. And riches and ruin
meet the eye in a strange medley. Dead greatness and the prosaic
present.

Modern bungalows, where the faltering conqueror watches the
tax-ridden ryots dot the landscape, and an overweighted official
system brings its haughty military, its self-sufficient civilians,
its proud womanhood, to drain the exhausted heart of India. And
the ryot groans under many taskmasters.

Lingering with a restless heart, in Allahabad, Alan Hawke roused
himself as at a bugle call, when he received a telegram announcing
the safe arrival of the Empress of India at Calcutta.

"La danse va commencer," he muttered, as he read the brief words
of his employer: "Go on to Delhi, await me there. Telegrams to you
there at private address. Leave letters." The signature "Lausanne"
was a new spur to his well-considered prudence. And, so, the next
day, Major Hawke sedately descended at Delhi.

There was nothing to distinguish Hawke from any other well-to-do
European, as he stood gazing around the station, in his cool