He was aware of the accusations against the ruling Khan.

He knew that after night had fallen Wafadar Nazim, the Khan's uncle, a restless, ambitious, disloyal man, crept down to the river-bank and held converse with the priest.

Thus he was ready so far as he could be ready.
The news that the road was broken was flashed to him from the nearest telegraph station, and within twenty-four hours he led out a small force from his Agency--a battalion of Sikhs, a couple of companies of Gurkhas, two guns of a mountain battery, and a troop of irregular levies--and disappeared over the pass, now deep in snow.
"Would he be in time ?" Not only in India was the question asked.

It was asked in England, too, in the clubs of Pall Mall, but nowhere with so passionate an outcry as in the house at the foot of the Sussex Downs.
To Sybil Linforth these days were a time of intolerable suspense.

The horror of the Road was upon her.