And Noreen woke later to learn that the man she loved had left her again
without farewell, that the fog of misunderstanding between them was not yet
lifted.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE CAT AND THE TIGER
Several weeks had passed since the Durga Puja Festival. Over the Indian
Empire the dark clouds were gathering fast. The Pathan tribes along the
North-west Frontier were straining at the leash; Afridis, Yusufzais,
Mohmands, all the _Pukhtana_, were restless and excited. The _mullahs_ were
preaching a holy war; and the _maliks_, or tribal elders, could not
restrain their young men. Raids into British Indian territory were
frequent.
There was worse menace behind. The Afghan troops, organised, trained, and
equipped as they had never been before in their history, were massing near
the Khyber Pass. Some of the Penlops, the great feudal chieftains of
little-known Bhutan, were rumoured to have broken out into rebellion
against the Maharajah because, loyal to his treaties with the Government of
India, he had refused a Chinese army free passage through the country. All
the masterless Bhuttia rogues on both sides of the border were sharpening
their _dahs_ and looking down greedily on the fertile plains below.
All India itself seemed trembling on the verge of revolt. The Punjaub was
honeycombed with sedition. Men said that the warlike castes and races that
had helped Britain to hold the land in the Black Year of the Mutiny would
be the first to tear it from her now.
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