At Sar the Mission found everything in silver paper. It was met imposingly at the Gate of the Great Evil, ten miles below the city, where the river tears a way through rocks of black basalt, and had eaten there the salted cake of a sacred hospitality.
It was welcomed into Sar by the bellowings of an unspeakable music, and for three days the bearers of gifts and good wishes wore a path through the Bazar between the Residency and the New Palace.
Chantry reported a pleasing change in the Khan's bearing since the Mission had been appointed, his affability, attention to protests and anxiety for the comfort of the new comers.
Out of this very consideration arose the first note of discord, owing, as Chantry put it under his breath, to Terrington's "damned pigheadedness."
His own guard of Sikhs, Dogras and Bakót levies had been housed in the Old Palace, now called the Fort, a low mud and stone building, whose brown walls of astounding thickness rose hard upon the green tangle of chenar in which the Residency stood. The little force fitted it as scantily as a wizened kernel fits its shell, and, although the river washed the Fort's eastern face and secured that from assault, was too scant to hold it. The addition of the odd two hundred of the Commissioner's escort made defence quite another matter.
The Khan knew that, and with many apologies for the lack of accommodation in the Fort, cleared out his own barracks on the other side of the river, and put them with immense affability and the stores they contained at Chantry's disposal for the escort's occupation.
Chantry, unable ever to credit any one with less than his own share of honour, accepted gratefully on the Commissioner's behalf, glad to be relieved from a further cleansing of the Fort and from the pressing difficulty of provisions.
He explained the arrangement to Sir Colvin, as the Guides swung out of the brown mob of Saris, past the guard of honour into the Residency compound, and formed front with their own undauntable swagger before Rose Chantry's smiling eyes.
Aire listened attentively, with his eye on the frail figure in heliotrope on the verandah.
"Sounds all that's desirable," he said; "but I'm not the one to settle it. There's your man," he nodded, as Terrington rode up to report.