Four years had passed away and the Dream in Red Sandstone still waited for the Dreamer: waited, as it still waits, deserted but not ruined, the Great Arch of Victory remaining as Birbal had prophesied, that which no man having once seen, can ever forget.

But Birbal himself had passed into the unknown; almost into the forgotten save for his master's undying affection which, even after two years, still scanned the earthly horizon eagerly looking for news, at any rate, of his lost friend; since Birbal's actual death is one of those things of which neither past or present hold any knowledge. He disappeared in the mountains of SwÂt whither he had gone in the vain effort to translate one of Akbar's dreams into terms of reality.

For the Great Mogul, Emperor of India, had dreams of conquest, not by sword, not even by religion, as his great forerunner the Emperor Asoka had had in the years before Christ--but by common sense; that is the voluntary submission of the individual to a collective policy which makes for peace and prosperity to the mass of the people.

Deprived of latter-day delusions, modern foolishnesses, Akbar's dream was Socialism. Not the Socialism which proclaims the right of the individual, which presses that home against all other considerations, but the Socialism which sweeps all things, individual poverty as well as individual wealth into the Great Mill of God for the good of the race; which holds personal comfort unworthy of consideration.

It was not, perhaps, a policy suited to the most turbulent tribes upon the Indian Frontier. Still Kabul had been annexed almost without a blow, Kashmir brought into the Imperial net by a peaceful demonstration, and, but for Sinde, the Imperial armies would scarcely have struck a blow during these years of Imperial aggrandisement.

Anyhow, the experiment, one after Akbar's own heart, was tried; and Birbal went with the forces as a counterpoise to the old Commander in Chief (he was the Wellington of Akbar's reign) and his more antiquated methods of suasion. They drew lots, those two friends of the King, Abulfazl and Birbal, which should take the onerous post; and the lot fell on Birbal. It is said that the King hesitated to let him go; but behind friendship lay Kingship.

So he went, and disputes soon arising between the policy of pike and cannonade, as against a mere display of force, Birbal, left in the lurch, disappeared for ever with fifteen hundred picked men amid the peaks and passes of the Alai Mountains.

It had been a great blow to Akbar; he had, indeed, refused to believe in his friend's death, and still looked for him to return--even if from the Other Side--in obedience to his promise.

But now, this 10th of May, 1590, he was pausing a little below the top of the Pir Panjal Pass on the way to Kashmir, awaiting the arrival of William Leedes, the English jeweller, who all these years had been engaged in cutting the Great Diamond of India.

It was ready now, and Akbar was eager to see it. But the little party escorting the jeweller and his charge had not arrived that morning, so Akbar had come out alone to a favourite vantage point below the actual snows, whence the whole Panjab plain rising an almost incredible height in the sky, could be seen.

It was like a shield, he thought suddenly, as he noted the palpable curve of the horizon; higher in the middle, lower at the sides. That was the curve of the world's surface, of course; still it reminded one of the curve of a great shield set between these holy snows of HimÂlya and the world beyond. Aye! for the blue of that distant plain was darker nowhere, was lighter nowhere; and everywhere alike it was damascened with threads--broader, narrower--of gold.

The land of the Five Rivers! A fair land indeed! A broad battle shield to the rest of India.

"Lo! there is gran'dad!" came a voice from behind him, and he turned at the sound of little pattering feet to see his grandson, a child of about two, stumbling swiftly over the broken ground toward him.

"Have a care Fair-face," (Khushru) he called, holding out his arms, and the child with a laughing crow, hurrying still harder, almost fell into their shelter.

"Truly! thou art as two peas in one pod," gasped a breathless voice, as Auntie Rosebody, completely done by hurrying up the hill, flung herself on the ground beside her nephew. She looked not a day older with her gray hair stuffed away into a Mogul cap, her petticoats tucked away into full Mogul trousers. So, had she roamed the hills, as a girl, with her father Babar, and now, in her old age, she set an example to all other ladies of the camp. Umm Kulsum, ever her close companion, followed on her heels, dressed in like manner, and stood looking down on the little family party.

"Lo! nephew! at times it takes me," said the old lady, nodding her head sagely, "to leave the scapegrace--who hath, nathless been behaving more reputably of late--out of the bargain altogether! The boy is more like JalÂl-ud-din Mahomed Akbar than SalÎm ever was, and that is a fact! But"--seeing a frown come to Akbar's face--"I am not here to fashion likeness, but because," here she drew her face into a decent pucker of sorrow, "having been--God forgive me--Aye! and Umm Kulsum too--part responsible for its theft--truly, nephew, your old aunt feels ever about her neck the bowstring that should have been drawn, and was not, thanks to----"

Akbar interrupted her with patient gloom. "We have talked this out many times, oh! most reverend aunt. After all there was no mischief done." He thought ever as he spoke of that Arch of Victory standing deserted on the Sikri Ridge.

"But there might have been," interrupted Aunt Rosebody, hotly. "Take not penitence from my soul, nephew. 'Tis good to have sins to repent when one grows old and there are no more to commit. So, having been in the tale at the beginning----"

Akbar looked pathetically at Umm Kulsum, who had sunk to her knees in contrition.

"It is because, Highness," she answered as if to a question, "the jeweller is arrived, and is even now on his way hither."

Akbar sprang to his feet, light as a boy. Dressed in hunting leathers with the close Mogul cap crested with a heron's plume, he looked not a day older, though his short hair above his beardless face had grown almost white.

"Here!" he cried, and even as he spoke a party of three or four showed rounding the rocky path.

A few minutes later Akbar stood holding the diamond, half its original size, but brilliant exceedingly in the hollow of his right hand.

"For my part," sniffed Auntie Rosebody, "I liked it better as it was. True, it dazzles the eyes, but to look at it much would be to court blindness. Lo! it gives me the browache. Come Ummu, let us on our way. I have promised Hamida, rhubarb-stew to her dinner and we must climb to the snows for that."

But Umm Kulsum lingered for consolation since, in truth, the stone bewildered her. "True, chachaji" (maternal uncle), she said softly, "I am not clever enough for it. There be so many sides, and each seemeth different."

Aye that was it! So many sides, thought Akbar, as, after dismissing the jeweller and his escort for refreshment, he sate on that pinnacle of rock almost overhanging the Panjab plain, and looked at the Luck which he had had cut in Western fashion.

His fowling piece--for he had been on his way to one of his long solitary rambles--lay beside him and on the polished steel of its lock the brilliant sunshine glinted, sending reflected light to touch and make visible the almost microscopic fruition of a tiny lichen on the rock.

But how much more brilliant was the light that sparkled from the diamond!

A hundred suns in one? No it was a hundred worlds--worlds unseen till then.

What would it--what might it not--what ought it not to make manifest?

So once more as he sate holding his luck in his hands, holding it between him and the river-damascened shield of the wide Panjab plain, the Self that is behind Self found eyes and saw.

What did he see? Did he see the Shield of India stand in the forefront of battle for the principles he preached, as it did in Mutiny time? Or did sight pass beyond that, and did he see the East, intoxicated by the errors of the West, aping the horrors of a civilisation which has missed its way, which has forgotten that Socialism is Despotism--the Despotism of Fate whose eye is fixed, not on the equality of the individual, but the ultimate outcome of Race?

Who knows?

For as the morning sun rose to power, vapoury mist-clouds gathered on the damp mountain sides below, and crept up and up, hiding all things, obscuring all things.

The wide shield of the Land of the Five Rivers went first. Bit by bit the hurrying mists obscured it, the damascening disappeared until high upon the sky only a clear blue curved rim remained--an arch of victory that stretched over the visible world.

Then the mist claimed Akbar's outstretched hand; so, rising, rolling over on itself, almost playing with the short flower-set turf, patched here and there with melting snow, and nestling into the crannies of the rock, it shrouded the King from his Kingdom, the Man from his World--and the Dreamer was alone with his Dream.

He was asleep, his head resting on a tuft of those tiny blue poppies which grow on the peaks of Holy HimÂlya--poppies of heavenly rest whose petals look as if they had been cut from the sky--when Aunt Rosebody's voice roused him. The sun, having overcome the mists, was shining brightly.

"Lo!" she exclaimed, "the King hath been delayed no doubt, but high up where we were seeking rhubarb it was like the Day of Resurrection to see the mists tear themselves to shreds in rage as the Sun caught them. So goes Ignorance before Wisdom. And little Fair-face hath found his granddad a nÂrgiz--present it, child, though 'tis late for a New Year offering. Lo! he is the spit of my father--on whom be peace--no flower escapes him."

"And I have found violets for the King," smiled Umm Kulsum, comfortably. She was more than ever a Mother of Plumpness in her stuffed Mogul costume.

"Ps'sh" commented Auntie Rosebody scornfully. "What are flowers to rhubarb? And I have enough for two stews, so RÂkiya Begum may lay her tartness to that--if she will eat of it, though mayhap at her age she hath forgotten her youth. As for me, 'twill be a Day of Resurrection indeed to taste of it again, for I have dreamt of it all these years."

Akbar caught up the child with a sudden laugh, and setting him astride his shoulders began the descent to the camp below.

"'Tis as well, most reverend," he said "that some dreamers dream true."

Did he think as he spoke of a woman who had dreamed her dream through to the Truth, whose hiding place is immortality, whose shadow is death?

Perhaps he did. Perhaps, even now, on those misty spring mornings when the sun chases the snow vapours over the blue gentians and rosy alpine primulas that edge the snow patches on the peaks of the Pir Panjal, the Self that lay behind the Self that was called Akbar sits, enshrouded by the mists and looks out over the Empire of the Great Mogul.

What does the Prince of Dreamers think of it?

F. A. Steel.

28th January, 1908.

FOOTNOTES

Footnote 1: Memoirs of Gulbadan Begum.

Footnote 2: New Year.

Footnote 3: Two opposing sects of Mahommedans.

Footnote 4: Two opposing sects of Mahommedans.

Footnote 5: The ChÂran bard and champion is a hereditary office held very sacred by the RÂjpÛts.

Footnote 6: Favourite supper dishes on account of their supposed qualities.

Footnote 7: Copy of real letter.

Footnote 8: The ordinary outside-veil with eye-holes in it.

Footnote 9: This is a fair translation of the name PayandÂr.

Footnote 10: The Syeds as lineal descendants of Mahommed.

Footnote 11: A very dreadful female ghost.

Footnote 12: A tribe who have the gift of (to use theatrical parlance) "making up" to perfection.

Footnote 13: The two Recording Angels.

Footnote 14: Sir Edwin Arnold's translation.

Footnote 15: Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold.