BARCLAY OF THE GUIDES

BY HERBERT STRANG

HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON

Copyright 1908 in the United States of America

REPRINTED 1924 IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. CLAY AND SONS, LTD.,
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

PREFACE

The great Mutiny embraced so wide an area, in which momentous events happened almost simultaneously in places far apart, that it seemed advisable to confine the historical background of this story to the siege of Delhi, the city which was the heart of the rebellion. In regard to the historical persons introduced, care has been taken to adhere as closely as possible to facts; and, where the romancer's licence must needs put words into their mouths, to conform to probability and their known characters. If the boys who read these pages should care to know more of the great men of whom they get glimpses, they will find a store of good things in Lumsden of the Guides, by Sir Peter Lumsden and George R. Elsmie; the Memoirs of Sir Henry Daly, by Major H. Daly; A Leader of Light Horse (Hodson), and the Life of John Nicholson, both by Lieut.-Colonel Trotter. The history of the Mutiny, as related in the pages of Kaye and Malleson, will never lose its fascination.

Herbert Strang

CONTENTS

[PREFACE]
[CHAPTER THE FIRST The Raid]
[CHAPTER THE SECOND The Making of a Pathan]
[CHAPTER THE THIRD Sky-high]
[CHAPTER THE FOURTH The Return of Sherdil]
[CHAPTER THE FIFTH Reprisals]
[CHAPTER THE SIXTH In the Nets]
[CHAPTER THE SEVENTH Jan Larrens]
[CHAPTER THE EIGHTH A Competition Wallah]
[CHAPTER THE NINTH A Fakir]
[CHAPTER THE TENTH The Delhi Road]
[CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH The Missy Sahib]
[CHAPTER THE TWELFTH Bluff]
[CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH Some Lathi-wallahs and a Camel]
[CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH Kaluja Dass, Khansaman]
[CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH Within the Gates]
[CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH The Coming of Bakht Khan]
[CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH The Doctor's Divan]
[CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH The Spoilers Spoiled]
[CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH Asadullah]
[CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH Wolf and Jackal]
[CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIRST Master and Servant]
[CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND The Fight of Bakr-Id]
[CHAPTER THE TWENTY-THIRD Ordeal]
[CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FOURTH Nikalsain]
[CHAPTER THE TWENTY-FIFTH The Storming of Delhi]
[CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH Eighty to One]
[CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SEVENTH Duty]
[EPILOGUE]
[GLOSSARY]
[THE BOY'S NEW LIBRARY]

CHAPTER THE FIRST

The Raid

Ahmed, son of Rahmut Khan, chief of the village of Shagpur, was making his lonely way through the hills some three miles above his home. He could see the walled village perched on a little tract of grassy land just where the base of the hills met the sandy plain. It was two thousand feet or more below him, and he could almost count the flat-topped houses clustered beyond his father's tower, which, though actually it rose to some height above them, dominating them, and affording an outlook over miles and miles of the plain, yet appeared to Ahmed, at his present altitude, merely a patch in the general level.

Between him and the village lay three miles of grey rugged hill country, scarred with watercourses, and almost void of vegetation. A mile away, indeed, there was a long stretch of woodland, lying like a great green smudge upon the monotony of grey. It was a patch of irregular shape, narrowing here, broadening there, filling a valley which bent round towards the village. Ahmed was accustomed to shoot there occasionally, but he preferred the more exciting and more dangerous sport of hunting on the hills, where he might stalk his quarry from crag to crag, leaping ravines, swarming up abrupt and precipitous cliffs, always in peril of a fall that might break his limbs even if it did not crash the life out of him. For Ahmed was of a daring disposition, fearless, undauntable, yet possessed of a certain coolness of judgment by which he had hitherto brought himself unscathed through sixteen years of adventurous boyhood.

He was a tall, slim, lissom fellow, with very black hair and a swarthy skin, which set off the spotless white of his turban. He wore the loose frock and baggy trousers of the country. Yet one observing him would have marked certain differences between his features and those of the Pathans among whom he dwelt. His nose was arched, but it was thinner than was usual among his countrymen. His lips were not so thick as theirs, nor was his mouth so large, and his eyes, instead of coal-black, were of a curious steely-grey. And any one who saw him bathing with the lads of his village (itself a strange pastime, for the hill-men have no great partiality for water) would have been struck by the paleness of his skin where it was protected from the sun and the weather. The observer's conclusion would probably have been that Ahmed was a Pathan of a particularly refined type, and in all likelihood an offshoot of some noble family which time's vicissitudes had reduced.

Ahmed stood for a few moments looking down at Shagpur, then turned to pursue his way. He had a fowling-piece slung at his back; his intention was to ascend the hills for perhaps another thousand feet, to a spot where he would probably come upon a small herd of black-buck. But he had not mounted far from the place at which he had paused when he halted again, and, putting his left hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun's rays, gazed steadily in a direction away from the village. Below him the plain stretched for many miles, bare and desolate, though when the rains came by and by it would be clothed with verdure. Scarcely a tree broke its level, and so parched was it now that no beast could have found sustenance there. But far away Ahmed's keen eye had descried what appeared to be a speck upon the horizon, and he watched it intently.

There was nothing unusual in the sight itself. Many a time he had seen just such a speck in the sky, watched it grow in breadth and height, until it stretched across the plain like an immense wall, thirty miles long, a thousand feet high. He had seen it approach like a monstrous phantom, driving before it, as it were, circling flights of kites and vultures, enveloping the bases of the hills, shutting out the sun with yellow scudding clouds. But such a dust-storm ordinarily swept over the plain southwards: Ahmed had never seen one approach from the west; and after a long and steady gaze at the speck, which grew slowly in size, he suddenly dropped his hand, uttered an exclamation in the Pashtu tongue, and turning his back began to retrace his course, at a speed vastly greater than that at which he had formerly been moving, towards his distant village.

The moving speck had resolved itself into a band of horsemen. They had been too far away for him to distinguish individuals and know who and what they were; but, considering the quarter from which they were coming, his instant thought was that they were an enemy, and it behoved him to give his people warning. In that wild country of the border raids were frequent enough. Especially was a warning necessary to-day, for the village was in poor condition to defend itself. Only the day before, Rahmut Khan, his father, had ridden out with all the younger men to raid horses on the British frontier. Ahmed shrewdly suspected that tidings of this expedition had been conveyed to Minghal Khan, the chief's inveterate enemy and rival, and Minghal had taken advantage of it to make the attack for which he had no doubt long awaited a favourable occasion. And what occasion could be more favourable than the absence of the old warrior on an enterprise from which, if at once successful, he could not return for five or six days, and which, if he found himself at first baulked in it, might occupy him for a fortnight?

Ahmed was well aware of the danger in which Shagpur lay. The village had a high wall; but he had no belief that the gates could withstand the assault of a determined enemy. It would be something to the good, however, if the assailants could be checked for a time, and they might be checked by the shutting of the gates. But the villagers could not see from the walls the advancing band; unless there was some one on the tower, or Ahmed himself should give warning, the enemy would be upon them before the gates could be closed, and then it would be a tale of rapine and massacre. He knew that, make what speed he might, he could not, if he followed the way he had come, reach the village before the mounted men. The only chance was to gain the wood, through which, being on a level, he could run fleetly. Swerving, therefore, from the direct line to the village, Ahmed scrambled down the rough hillside, leaping little chasms, springing from rock to rock with the agility of a mountain goat, yet with circumspection, for should he miss his footing a sprained ankle would be the least of his mishaps, and Shagpur was lost.

Down and down he went, stumbling, slipping, barking his shins, but never heeding such slight mishaps so long as nothing brought him to a check. And now, just as the dark woodland seems at his very feet, he pulls up with a sudden cry of "Hai!" for in front of him there yawns a ravine, four or five paces across, and many feet deep. He glances to either side: a little to the left it narrows slightly, but only by reason of a jagged spit of rock that juts out—a spit so small as barely to afford resting-place to a foot. At every other spot the ravine is even wider than where he was brought to a halt. He waits but a moment—long enough to reflect that he dare not go the toilsome way round, lest he arrive too late; and then, setting his teeth and clenching his fingers so tightly that the nails press deep into his palms, he takes a leap. Misjudgment of the distance by an inch would dash him into the chasm below; but practice has given him perfect command of his muscles; he springs lightly, confidently; his right foot lands on the precariously narrow spit of rock, and as he stoops his body he brings the left foot against the right; then, just as it would seem that the momentum of his flight must cause him to sway and stagger and topple over sideways, he rises as on springs to his full height, and with another effort of his well-trained muscles he hurls himself from the spit on to the broader ledge behind, and is safe.

Panting as he was, Ahmed sped off without delay. At last he reached the edge of the wood; he plunged into it, and finding a track which he had often followed, he ran easily as a deer. When he emerged at the other end, he dashed across the fields, green with his father's crops, and came to the gates.

"Minghal Khan is upon us!" he cried, as he entered. Some young boys playing in the street took up the cry and ran screaming into their houses; old Ahsan, the gate-keeper—now frail and bent, but once the best rider and the cunningest horse-stealer of Shagpur—came tottering out of his hut.

"Minghal Khan, say you, Ahmed-ji? That son of a dog!" and he slammed-to the gates and barred them, muttering curses on the enemy.

By this time the cries of the children had brought the villagers into the street. They were for the most part old men and feeble; the young and able-bodied were with Rahmut Khan; but there were among them a few men in the prime of life and some boys of about Ahmed's age. Breathlessly he told them what he had seen.

"The gates are but as ghi to Minghal," cried old Ahsan. "They will not keep him out till the sun sets."

"Then we will go into the tower," said Ahmed, "and shut ourselves up there until my father returns."

He ran into his father's house and brought out the chief's two wives and three daughters, who fled swiftly to the tower upon the wall. Then with the aid of some of the people he collected what provisions he could; the women filled their brass pots with water at the well, and carried them on their heads to the tower; men followed them with arms and ammunition, and with strong balks of wood for barricading the foot of the winding stair. Within ten minutes of Ahmed's arrival in the village all who chose had shut themselves with him in the refuge.

Not all chose. Even while these preparations were being made some of the men held aloof. Minghal Khan was a younger, wealthier, and more powerful chief than Rahmut: what was the good of holding out against him? There had been for many years a feud between them; such an attack as was now imminent might long have been foreseen. The more powerful must win: it was Fate. Had they not known many such cases? Was it not better to yield to the enemy at once and make their peace with him? Ahmed and old Ahsan hotly protested, appealed to their loyalty, reminded them of what the chief's anger would be when he came back and found that they had betrayed him. These appeals were effective with the bolder spirits, but there was still a good proportion of the villagers who foresaw that their chief's dominion was at an end, and were eager to make their own future secure by nailing the rising sun. These remained in the village street, and when, a few minutes after Ahmed and his party had shut themselves in the tower, the band of horsemen, fifty strong, with Minghal at their head, rode up to the gates and demanded admittance, one of the disaffected removed the bars and made humble obeisance as the rival chief entered.

The new-comers uttered loud shouts of exultation at the ease of their victory, not at first aware of the resolute little band in the tower. It was only when Minghal had entered the chief's house and found it deserted that he suspected what had happened. Then with a grim smile he questioned the villagers, all most obsequious to their new master; and Ahmed, watching the scene from a latticed window high up in the tower, wondered what the smile portended. He expected to see Minghal's men collect the grain-stuffs and everything else of value that the village contained, and then set fire to the houses; but old Ahsan by his side, better acquainted with the long feud which had existed between the two chiefs, stroked his beard and groaned.

"Hai! hai!" he muttered. "It has come at last. But I am too old, too old, to serve a new master. Shagpur will have another gate-keeper now, Ahmed-ji."

"What meanest thou, old man?" asked Ahmed, wondering.

"Minghal has come not for plunder, but for mastery," was the reply. "'Tis what he has meditated for a dozen years; and who can strive against Fate? When the master comes back he will find that Shagpur is no longer his. If he resists he will be slain; if he accepts his lot, he will be loaded with chains or cast out of the village, a beggar to the end of his days."

"And what of us, then?" asked Ahmed.

"Hai!" said the old man. "As for you, I speak not, Ahmed-ji; but for me, I am too old, as I said. I have my knife."

Ahmed looked into the gate-keeper's face. He read there neither fear nor despair, nothing but a calm resolution. Then he uttered a scornful laugh.

"No one can strive against Fate, truly," he said; "but who knows that Fate has given us into Minghal's hand? By the beard of the Prophet, Ahsan——"

But the old man put his hand on the boy's mouth.

"Hush, Ahmed-ji," he said, with a sort of stern tenderness; "'tis not meet, little one, that oath in your mouth. You have well-nigh forgotten, but I do not forget. We are as we were born, and you were born a Feringhi."

CHAPTER THE SECOND

The Making of a Pathan

Eight years before this raid of Minghal's on Shagpur, a small boy, dark, bright-eyed, happy-looking, was sitting on the grass at some little distance from an open tent, nursing a wooden sword, and trying to make conversation in babbling Urdu with a big, swarthy, bearded Pathan who squatted opposite him, and smiled as he tried to understand and answer the little fellow's questions. From the tent came the sound of voices, and the Pathan would now and then lift his eyes from the child and dart a keen glance towards the spot where Mr. George Barclay, deputy-commissioner of the district, was engaged in dealing with one of the troublesome cases that came before him for settlement.

For many years the dwellers in the plains of the Panjab had suffered from the encroachments of their neighbours in the hills. At first these hill-men only came to the plains in the winter-time, when their own bare lands became uninhabitable from frost and snow, and returned in the summer, when they might find sustenance for their flocks, and good hunting. But seeing the weakness of the plain-dwellers and the fertility of their soil, the hill-men had not been satisfied with paying these winter visits, and, after remaining as uninvited guests, returning to their own place without having made a domicile in the plains. They began to regard the land on which they temporarily settled as theirs, and by and by exacted tribute from the rightful owners. Thus they became possessed of two homes, one for the winter, one for the summer. Naturally this seizure of property was little to the liking of the plain-dwellers. They made some resistance and fought the oppressors, but were no match in arms for the more warlike hill-men. When, however, the Panjab was incorporated in the dominions of John Company, some of the dispossessed land-owners took advantage of the well-known respect of the British for law to make an attempt to recover their property through the agency of their new rulers; and it was to show cause why he should not yield the lands he held in the plain that Minghal Khan, one of the hill chieftains, had been summoned before the deputy-commissioner.

Minghal obeyed the summons grudgingly. In the hills he was free, and owned no master save God; it irked him that any one, least of all the sahib-log, infidels, eaters of pigs, should question his rights in the plains; for though he knew that the lands in dispute were not his by inheritance, yet might was right, and if the plain-men were not strong enough to hold them—why, so much the worse for them. And when he came down from the hills to argue the case before the British commissioner, he begged his nearest neighbour, Rahmut Khan of Shagpur, to accompany him and give him at least moral support. Rahmut did not refuse this request; but he was above all things a warrior; he had no skill in reasoning, like his more wily neighbour Minghal; and while the latter was using all his eloquence, every trick and artifice of which he was capable, to persuade Mr. Barclay that forcible possession was of more account than title-deeds, Rahmut amused himself by talking to and playing with the deputy-commissioner's little son. The boy's mother had died in Lahore some little while before, and his father kept him constantly in his company, even when his duties called him into remote parts of his district.

Rahmut, like all his race, was passionately fond of children; the fearlessness of the bright-eyed boy appealed to him, and day after day, while Minghal was waiting his turn, and when he was trying Mr. Barclay's patience inside the tent, Rahmut spent hours with the boy, giving him rides on his horse, laughing as he strutted by with a wooden sword, allowing him to fire a shot or two from his pistol. And so, by the time Minghal's case was decided Rahmut and Jim Barclay—the big, bearded Pathan warrior of near sixty years, and the English boy of eight—were fast friends.

Minghal lost his case. The deputy-commissioner decided against him, and gave judgment that he must quit the lands he had usurped. Minghal left the tent in a rage, muttering curses on the infidel dog who had rejected, quietly but firmly, all his pleas, and declaring to Rahmut that he would one day have his revenge. Rahmut was not a whit more friendly disposed to the new rulers than was Minghal himself; but he was a man of few words, and never threatened what he could not at once perform. Moreover, he had never thought much of his neighbour's case, and was not surprised at its failure. Minghal found him less sympathetic than he considered to be his due, and returned to his home in the hills in a very ill humour.

The opportunity for vengeance came sooner than he could have expected. In the spring of the next year, when a civil servant named Vans Agnew and Lieutenant Anderson of the Bombay army were escorting a new diwan or governor to the city of Multan, they were treacherously attacked, and their murder was the signal for a general uprising of the Sikh soldiery. News of the rebellion was carried through the country with wonderful speed; it came to the ears of Rahmut and Minghal, and, fretting as they were under the restraints imposed upon them by the proximity of the British, they resolved at once to make common cause with the revolted Sikhs. It happened that Mr. Barclay had lately "gone into camp" at a spot very near the place where he had given his decision against Minghal. The Pathan chiefs set off with their armed followers, rushed Mr. Barclay's almost unprotected camp, for he had as yet heard nothing of the revolt at Multan, and the deputy-commissioner, without a moment's warning, was shot through the heart. His little son would have suffered the same fate, so bitter was the tribesmen's enmity against all the Feringhis, but for Rahmut, who remembered how much he had been attracted by the boy, and saw an opportunity for which he had yearned—of providing himself with an heir. One of his wives, now dead, had borne him two sons, but both had died fighting against Ranjit Singh, and his two living wives had given him only daughters. In such cases it was common for a chief to adopt a son and make him his heir. Rahmut, now getting on in years, had envied the English sahib who was blessed with a boy so sturdy and frank and fearless. While Minghal, therefore, was wreaking his vengeance on the father, Rahmut caught up the son, set him on his saddlebow, and forbade any of his men to lay hands on him. He had resolved to take the boy back with him by and by to Shagpur, to bring him up as a Pathan, and if he proved worthy, to proclaim him his heir.

Minghal was very indignant when the old chief announced his intention. The boy, he protested, was an infidel dog: it was shame to a Pathan and a follower of the Prophet to show kindness to any of the hated race who had laid their hands on this land, claiming tribute from the free-men of the hills, deposing and setting up governors at their will. But Rahmut would not be denied. Minghal dared not cross the old warrior; for the moment he appeared to acquiesce, but in his heart he hated his neighbour chief, and resolved from that time to set himself in rivalry against him. If he could not remove the boy, he could at least bide his time, and when Rahmut's time came to die, it should be seen whether he could not rely on racial and religious prejudice to prevent the scandal of a tribe being ruled by an infidel Feringhi.

Rahmut kept the boy with him in the Panjab through the campaign. He joined forces with the troops sent by the king of Kabul to the assistance of the Sikhs. He fought in the terrible battle of Chilianwala, and when Gough signally routed his brave enemy at Gujarat, he fled with the Afghans and Pathans to their inaccessible hills, escaped the pursuit of the Company's troops, and reached in safety his mountain home at Shagpur.

Then he carried out his intention. He called the boy Ahmed, and had him trained in the Mohammedan faith by the mullah of his village, who taught him to read the Koran (though, being in Arabic, he never understood a word of it). Ahmed wore a white turban, kept the Musalman fasts and feasts, and though he was at first very miserable, and wept often for the father he had lost, he gradually forgot his early life, and delighted his new father's heart as he grew up a straight, sturdy Pathan boy. Rahmut was wonderfully kind to him. His wives were at first jealous of the boy, and there were some in the village who never lost their first distrust and envy of him; but as years passed by, and Ahmed proved himself to be as bold and daring as he was sunny-tempered, as good at hunting and warlike exercises as he was in the ritual of religion, he became a favourite with most. The chief visited with heavy punishment some who dared to give expression to their resentment at his adoption of a Feringhi boy, and after that the ill-feeling died down, and if any remained it found an outlet only in murmurs which the envious ones were careful to keep from their chief's ears.

Ahmed was now sixteen. He was his adoptive father's constant companion at home; but the old chief, while he allowed the boy to take part in his hunting expeditions, would never permit him to share in the raids which he sometimes made on the villages of his neighbours, nor in the horse-stealing enterprises he ventured in the British lines. He seemed to be beset by a fear lest the boy should be snatched from him, and in particular he dreaded lest any contact with the British should awake dormant recollections in his mind and be the means of carrying him back to his own people. The only experience Ahmed had of contests with men had been gained in occasional attacks on caravans of merchants as they passed between Persia and Afghanistan. But now that the boy was sixteen, Rahmut thought it was high time, he should be married in accordance with the customs of his country, and was looking about for a suitable bride. The old chief argued that when Ahmed was married there would be less likelihood of his ever wishing to leave his tribe, and he might then be given a greater freedom and take a full share in all their activities.

Though Ahmed thus had few enemies in Shagpur itself, there was one in Minghal's village of Mandan who caused Rahmut Khan some anxiety. This was his nephew Dilasah, a man near forty years old. Dilasah had expected to succeed his uncle in the chiefship, but he was an idle, ill-conditioned fellow, not without a certain fierce bravery when roused, but little inclined to bestir himself without great cause, exceedingly fond of eating, and very fat. For him Rahmut had the deepest contempt. There was a stormy scene between uncle and nephew when the Feringhi boy was brought to the village and formally adopted by the old chief; Rahmut poured out his scorn upon Dilasah, and the latter withdrew in high wrath and indignation from the village and joined himself to Minghal's folk. Rahmut was at first glad to be rid of him, but as years passed, and Minghal, by cunning wiles and stealthy diplomacy, increased his influence in the country and drew more and more men into his tribe, the chief of Shagpur foresaw that one day he might have serious trouble with his rival, and that the succession of Ahmed would be disputed. But he hoped that he would live long enough to see the boy develop into a full-grown warrior, able to hold his own by force of arms if the need should arise.

If he had guessed that his absence on the horse-stealing expedition would be taken advantage of by his enemy, he would without doubt have remained at home. But he had heard that Minghal had gone westward to intercept a caravan of cloth merchants on the road to Kabul; it was a trick of Minghal's to draw the old man out of the way; and thus it happened that the village was so poorly defended when Minghal made his attack.

CHAPTER THE THIRD

Sky-high

Old Ahsan, the gate-keeper, looked gloomily out of the lattice window and watched the proceedings of the invaders. He had spied Dilasah, his master's nephew, among them, and knew that the incident was more than an ordinary raid. Minghal's men gave no sign of any intention to collect the villagers' property—whether in goods or in animals—and afterwards burn the village; it was clear that the chief meant either to seize the place as his own, or to set his henchman Dilasah at the head of it. And that Ahsan had rightly guessed was proved when Minghal himself came to the foot of the tower and summoned all within it to descend and salaam to their new lord Dilasah.

Ahmed drew the gate-keeper back and put his head out.

"What dost thou think of us, Minghal Khan?" he cried scornfully. "Are we asses or even as camels? Know that we hold this tower for our rightful lord Rahmut, and thou had best return to thy little dwelling while there is yet time."

The Pathan's face darkened with anger.

"Thou darest mock me, Feringhi dog!" he cried. "Come down at once, or we will burn thee alive and send thee to the Pit."

But Ahmed only laughed. Talk of burning was mere foolishness, for the tower was of stone, and though they might burn the door, there was nothing else inflammable within their reach, save only the barricade which had been thrown across the winding stair, and even a Pathan's courage might shrink from attacking that in face of sturdy defenders armed with jazails on the stairs. Of this barricade, however, Minghal was as yet unaware, and his reply to Ahmed's scornful laugh was to set his men to make an assault upon the door. But they had no sooner approached it than a matchlock flashed from a narrow slit in the wall, and one of the assailants staggered back with a bullet in his leg. Furious, Minghal shouted to the other men to do his bidding, but another shot fell among them as they crowded about the door, and since they could not see who had fired, nor had any chance of hitting if they shot back, they made haste to flee out of harm's way, and Minghal himself saw that the task he had set them was impossible. The door was of stout and massive timber, and could not be broken in without a deal of hard battering; it would be folly to lose lives in that way when his purpose might be achieved by means of a charge of gunpowder. So he called off his men and bade them search the village for powder, not having brought more with him than was contained in his men's powder-flasks.

At this Ahmed chuckled: all the powder lay in two large bags in one of the upper rooms of the tower, whither it had been conveyed at the first alarm. The men's hunt through the village was fruitless. But Ahsan sighed heavily a little later when he saw two leave the village and gallop at a hot pace in the direction of Mandan.

"Minghal has sent for powder, Ahmed-ji," he said. "Without doubt we shall all be blown up."

"No, no; they cannot get back before morning," replied Ahmed, "and every day favours us. Maybe my father will come back earlier than we suppose."

"And if he does not?"

"Why, then we must defend ourselves as long as we can. Suppose they bring powder: they cannot lay a charge against the door in the daytime, for we could fire into them and blow them up with their own stuff. And when night comes, the moon will light up the inner wall for some hours, so that they would still be in great danger. And if, when the moon goes to the other side, they contrive to place their charge and blow in the door, it will only be to find us with our jazails at the barricade, and they will never get beyond it."

Ahmed's cheerfulness inspirited the old gate-keeper and the rest of the garrison. The women and girls had been conveyed to the upper chambers, and Ahmed at the fall of night went up to them and did what he could to reassure them. Once or twice during the night, after the moon had gone down, there were sounds from below indicating that another attempt was to be made on the door; but a shot from the window was sufficient to send the men scuttering back to the houses, and the hours from midnight to dawn passed undisturbed. The garrison snatched a little sleep, and were roused by the morning cry of the mullah in the village mosque calling to the faithful to awake: "Prayer is more than sleep!"

It was afternoon when the two men who had left the village were seen returning with three others, their horses loaded with bags, which no doubt contained gunpowder. They were received with shouts of "Wah! wah!" from their comrades as they entered the gate. Ahmed, watching them with Ahsan and others, saw them convey the powder to a lean-to beside the gate-keeper's hut against the wall. There was great cheerfulness among Minghal's men, who had idled away the day in gambling. Early in the morning Ahmed had seen three of them leave the village in the opposite direction from Mandan; and going to the top of the tower, he watched them ride for some two miles until they reached a hillock whose summit rose a little higher than the tower roof. There they dismounted and led their horses into a thin copse. They did not reappear, and Ahmed guessed that they had been sent there as an outpost to guard against any surprise from the sudden return of Rahmut Khan. It was clear that Minghal was resolved to carry through his design to the uttermost.

Confident as he was in appearance, Ahmed in reality felt no little anxiety. The quantity of powder brought into the village by Minghal's messengers was large enough not merely to blow in the door and the barricade, but even to make a breach in the tower wall. He knew very well that if the enemy once forced their way into the tower the case was hopeless; for the men he had with him were all well on in years, and with the fatalism of their race they would regard the first success of the enemy as a clear sign of Heaven's favour. It seemed to him imperative that Minghal should be by some means prevented from succeeding in any part of his purpose, and as the afternoon wore on he took counsel with Ahsan, telling him frankly of his anxieties.

"What you say is true," said the old man; "but how is it possible to do anything? They have the powder—may their graves be defiled!—and when it is dark we shall not be able to see to take aim at them as they bring it to the door."

"If we had but one friend in the village! The cowards! And they are fools as well, to desert a chief like my father for one like Minghal Khan. Were there one brave man having any wits among them, he would blow up that powder, and our trouble would be gone."

Ahsan could only sigh and wish that the chief had not gone horse-raiding.

"He is too old for such deeds. 'Tis time he rested and made ready to obey the last call. Hai! and some day, if he continues thus, he will fall into a snare—some calamity will light on him. It may be with him even as it was with Mir Ismail of Bangash."

"Why, how was it with him?"

"He had gone on just such an errand, and he was old, like our master Rahmut. He had cut a hole in the stable of the Malik he had gone to rob, and was in the very act of loosening the horse's halter when he was disturbed by a noise. Loh! he made haste to escape by the hole he himself had made, but being old and stiff, he had but got his head and shoulders out when his legs were caught from behind. Hai! hai! and then was he in desperate fear lest he should be dragged back and known by his captors, for he was a famous stealer of horses, and it would have snapped his heart-strings if they saw him and gloated over his capture. The honour of his family and people would be smirched. Wherefore he cried aloud to his son, who waited outside, bidding him cut off his head rather than let that shame fall upon him. His head being gone, they would not recognize his trunk."

"And did his son obey him?" asked Ahmed.

"He did, and so was the honour of his house saved," replied the old man.

Ahmed was silent for a minute or two; then he said—

"Ahsan, think you I could cut a hole in that shed where the powder-bags are laid?"

"Hai! How wouldest thou get there?" said the gate-keeper. "Verily not by the door; were it opened, Minghal's dogs would burst in."

"True, but could you not let me down over the wall by a rope?"

"And what then? The gates are shut: there is no entrance."

"But I know of a place on the other side of the village where there are notches in the wall, by which I might mount; and, the wall scaled, I could steal my way to the shed and maybe cut a hole and lay a train, and so fire the powder that lies there for our destruction."

"You could never get over the wall unspied," said the old man; "and if they catch you, you are dead."

"But the place where I can scale the wall will be in darkness when the moon shines on the tower. If it is to be done it must be done before the moon has crept round, for as soon as the tower door is in darkness be sure they will set about their purpose."

Ahmed was deaf to all entreaties, and about an hour before the earliest moment when the besiegers might be expected to begin their operations, he was let down by a rope from a window overlooking the wall, this side being in deep shadow. Having reached the ground, he stole along at the foot of the wall until he came to a spot some little distance away where he believed the notches to be. They had not been made intentionally, but were due to the crumbling of the clay of which the wall was made, and had not been filled up. He found them without difficulty, the outer side of the wall being at this point partially illuminated, while the inner side, in the shadow of the houses, was dark. Pausing a moment to make sure that all was quiet within, he set his bare foot in the lowest notch, and, aiding himself with his hands, heaved himself slowly up.

When his head was just below the top of the wall, he waited again, listening intently for sounds of movement or speech within the village. All was quiet in the immediate neighbourhood, though voices came faintly to his ear from the direction of the tower. He raised his head and peered over: nothing was to be seen; then with a final heave he rolled himself over the top, hung by his hands for a moment or two until his feet found a hollow to rest in, and then as quickly as might be made the descent, dropping the last six feet and alighting noiselessly on his bare soles.

A narrow lane ran between the wall and a large barn in which the villagers' grain was stored. Beyond this was the smithy, the potter's house, and one or two more small buildings, so that he could come, with fair security, to within a few feet of the shed where the powder lay. These last few feet of space were not screened, and in crossing them his risk would be greatest. Having come to the edge of it, he passed round the corner of the building, and saw to his joy that the enemy was hid from his view by the projecting shed itself. He stole along by the wall, gained the side of the shed, and without an instant's delay set to work with a chisel he had brought with him to loosen one of the planks in the wooden side, working with all possible silence. Once the light sound of a footstep caused him to scurry back to the shadowed lane; but the disturber, whoever he was, passed in another direction, and Ahmed sped back to finish his work.

Having removed the plank, he squeezed through into the shed without much difficulty, being slim, and groping about soon laid hands on one of the powder-bags. In this he cut a hole, then laid a train of powder to the opening in the shed wall, lighted the slow match Ahsan had furnished, and, breathing hard, ran like a deer back along the lane. At first he could not find the spot where he had descended the wall, and feared lest the explosion should occur before he had regained the tower. But discovering the place at length, he swarmed up, and now in his haste ventured to drop the full height of the wall. He fell on his face, rose in an instant, and scampered back to where the rope still dangled from the window. He had but just laid hands on it when there was a deafening explosion, followed by a great outcry from the men. When he regained the top of the tower, he ran with Ahsan and others to a window whence he could look down upon the scene. The shed was in flames; and he was surprised to see two or three forms prone on the ground near it. One of the men who had been keeping watch told him that several of the enemy had come to the door of the shed, no doubt to bring out the powder, at the moment when the explosion took place, and had been hurled to the ground by the flying timbers.

Minghal and Dilasah were raging up and down among their men. They looked on helplessly while the shed burnt, Minghal crying out that there was a traitor in the village. The street and the open space in front of the tower were crowded with people who had been startled from sleep by the uproar, and Minghal in his fury sent his men among them, to slash and slay. The poor villagers fled away and hid themselves, Ahsan declaring that they deserved no pity, because they had deserted their rightful master for the invader.

There was much rejoicing in the tower at the success of Ahmed's bold enterprise. Even the most faint-hearted now took courage. But it was clear that the enemy had no intention of departing. The failure of their scheme had made them only the more vindictive. Minghal sent some of his men for more powder; the rest, keeping well out of gunshot, squatted against the walls of the houses, ready to prevent any egress from the tower. It was plain that Minghal meant to make another attempt, and if he failed to gain entrance, to starve the defenders out.

Ahmed did not fear the first, but was greatly troubled at the prospect of a prolonged siege. In the few minutes' grace between his arrival in the village and the coming of the enemy there had not been time to convey a large supply of food and water into the tower. The water was already running short, and it was necessary to put the inmates on a scanty allowance. With great economy they might make it last for two or three days; then, unless help came, there would be no choice but to surrender, or to make an attempt to escape at night by means of the rope. Minghal as yet, clearly, had no suspicion that the powder had been fired by any one from the tower. It might be easy for the men and boys to let themselves down as Ahmed had done, but it would not be so easy for the women and girls to descend in the same way, and the least sound would bring the enemy upon them. From the top of the tower during that day Ahmed cast many an anxious glance in the direction whence his father might be expected to return; but there was no sign of him, and indeed, but for some mischance in his expedition, it was hardly likely that he would be back for several days.

In the afternoon Minghal's messengers returned with another supply of powder. As ill-luck would have it, with the fall of night a thick mist came down upon the village, obscuring the moon; and under cover of the darkness the men brought powder to the tower door and fired it. The door, massive as it was, was blown to splinters, and with yells of triumph the assailants rushed in when the smoke had cleared, confident that they were on the point of mastery. But the defenders had had ample time to prepare for them, and when, ignorant of the barricade, they began to rush up the winding stairs, Dilasah being at their head, they were met with a sharp fusillade, which struck down several of them and sent the rest scuttling away with yells of alarm. Dilasah himself was among those who were wounded, and Ahmed from his conning post above could dimly see his rival being carried away by two of the men.

This set-back, while it eased Ahmed's position for the moment, had the effect of making the enemy still more determined. Hitherto the most part of the men had not been greatly interested in the business. The quarrel was a personal one of their chief's; for themselves they would have been satisfied with plundering the village and returning to their own place. Even though Minghal inflamed their racial and religious prejudices against Ahmed as one of the hated Feringhis, they saw little to gain by capturing or killing him. But now that they had themselves suffered, their warlike instincts and their passion for revenge were aroused; and, moreover, they were nettled by their failure, considering that they outnumbered the defenders by at least ten to one.

The night passed quietly, but evidence of their new spirit was shown next day. Ahmed, looking from his window, saw signs of great activity below, though for a time neither he nor Ahsan nor any other of his comrades understood what was afoot. By and by, however, it became clear that the enemy were busily constructing shields of wood and goat-skins with which to defend themselves against musket-shots from beyond the barricade. The work was apparently finished by midday, for the men squatted in groups on the ground, taking their dinner, and talking with great cheerfulness. But when the hours of the afternoon went by without the expected attack, Ahmed concluded that it was put off till night, and felt that this time it would be pushed home. Defended by their shields, the men could easily bring powder to the base of the barricade, and if that was blown away it was only a question of minutes. It was useless to attempt to disguise from his comrades the great danger in which they stood, especially as they were now reduced to their last pitchers of water.

Now Ahsan made a proposal.

"'Tis time for you to leave us, Ahmed-ji," he said. "Minghal, that son of a dog, is bent on seizing you. It matters little about the rest of us, but you are the apple of the master's eye, and if you are safe, 'tis of little moment what happens to us. We shall become Minghal's men; we shall at least be saved alive. Do you, then, escape by the rope when darkness falls, and run to the hills, where you may hide until the master returns; and when you are gone, after a time we will deliver ourselves up to Minghal."

This suggestion was applauded by the other men. They had in truth little to gain by further resistance. If their lives were spared they would only pass into the service of another chief, and since Minghal's star seemed to be in the ascendant, that was a fate which all expected sooner or later to befall them. But Ahmed was very unwilling thus to throw up the sponge. Apart from his disinclination to desert his post, he knew how his father would be cut to the heart at the triumph of his rival, and felt that he himself would be for ever disgraced if this calamity should come upon the old chief during his absence. Yet he felt the impossibility of holding out much longer, and was troubled at the thought that all those with him might be killed if he did not yield.

"I will go apart and think over what you have said," he said to the man, "and I will come again and tell you my thoughts."

He went to the top of the tower, and leaning over the parapet began to ponder the difficult situation in which he found himself. And as he was sadly thinking that there was no other course than to surrender (for to run away and leave his comrades was abhorrent to him), his eye was suddenly caught by a small dark patch moving on the hillside far away towards the British frontier. The sun was behind him, the air was clear, and, gazing at what had attracted his notice, he was not long in coming to the conclusion that the dark shadow on the hill was a body of horsemen.

A great hope sprang up in his mind. It might be Rahmut returning with his men. True, it might be a band belonging to another chief, or even a troop of British horsemen, or of natives in the British pay. Keen as his eyes were, it was impossible at this distance—at least twelve miles, as he judged—to tell who the men were. But they were certainly approaching, though very slowly; they were coming from the very quarter whence his father would return, there was at least a good chance that they were friends. He ran down at once to the room where Ahsan and the rest were awaiting his return, and told them of what he had seen. They went back with him and looked eagerly across the plain. The horsemen appeared to have halted, they were no nearer than when he had seen them last; none of his comrades was better able than he to identify them.

"Let us make a beacon here," said one of the men. "If they are our own people they will ride at once to our help; if they are not, we shall be none the worse off."

"No, no," said old Ahsan; "that would be a foolish thing to do. Minghal's men cannot have spied them yet; we at this height can see many miles further than they below. And they cannot have been seen by the outpost on the hillock yonder, for, look! the copse is between them. Let us do nothing to put our enemies on guard. And besides, say we light a beacon, and our master comes riding to our help, Minghal, seeing the fire, would know its meaning, and even though he saw not the master's troop, he would suspect, and lay an ambush, and the master might be killed."

"But how, then, can we bring them to us?" asked Ahmed. "They have halted, as you see; perhaps they have had a long day's march and are tired. Perhaps they may encamp for the night; and if they do, or even if they continue to come slowly towards us, they may arrive too late. Shall we fire shots?"

"That is no better than to light a beacon," said Ahsan. "The shots would bring them fast enough to us; but as thou knowest, Ahmed-ji, the sound of their riding would be heard while they were yet far away, and they have but to come a little nearer to be seen by the outpost. The end would be the same: Minghal would lie hid in readiness to meet them, and they would fall into his hands."

"Yet we must do something," cried Ahmed, "and before it is dark. When night comes we shall be attacked and overcome; and my father, when he hears the firing, will come up in haste, and as you say, the sound of his riding will be heard; having overcome us, Minghal would have time to prepare to meet him."

"There is one way, Ahmed-ji," said Ahsan slowly. "One of us must go down the rope and haste to meet him and give him warning of what has befallen us here. And who better than thyself? Thou art swift of foot and skilled in the secret tracking down of prey: who more fit to undertake this errand or more likely to accomplish it?"

This was perfectly true; but the old man had another motive. There was still uncertainty whether the horsemen were friends or foes, and he wished in either case to secure the lad's safety. Ahmed did not see through the gate-keeper's design; he knew that, of the company there assembled, he would have the best chance of success; and so he agreed, as soon as dusk fell, to slip down the rope, make his way round the village, and set off towards the distant hill on which the dark patch could still be seen, stationary.

It wanted still two hours of dusk when this decision was come to. During that time Ahmed and the gate-keeper talked over the plan, and as they did so they saw the band of horsemen begin to move once more slowly towards them. They were at once alive to a danger. The horsemen were at least twelve miles from the village. At the pace at which they appeared to be riding it would take them four hours to reach the walls. But when they had covered half the distance they would come in sight of the outpost on the hillock; the alarm would be given, and they would arrive only to fall into a trap. Yet it was impossible to warn them. It would be unsafe for Ahmed to leave the tower until the approach of dark, and by that time the horsemen might have come within view from the hillock. Ahmed waited in great restlessness and anxiety, feeling his helplessness.

"'Tis in the hands of Allah," said Ahsan, trying to quiet him. "What is to be will be. But that thou hast Feringhi blood in thee, Ahmed-ji, thou wouldst not be so disturbed. We cannot hasten the dark; we cannot speak through the air to warn the master. But look what Allah can do; they have halted again."

And pointing over the parapet, he showed that the dark irregular shadow had rested a little lower down the hill, upon which lay the glow of the now setting sun.

As soon as the dusk was merging towards dark, Ahmed was let down by the rope. Ahsan had promised to hold out against any attack that Minghal might make. Then, creeping stealthily along by the foot of the wall, he continued till he came to a place where the ground was broken by a nullah, into which he leapt, and ran along its dry bottom at full speed until he arrived safely in the hills. By this time it was quite dark; but the moon was just rising, and in a little he was able by its light to guide his steps so that he did not stumble into a ravine or trip over a salient rock.

As he came near the place where the outpost was stationed he went very cautiously. The men had taken shelter in a rude shepherd's cairn; he saw the faint glow of their charcoal fire and heard their voices as he slipped by. Then he pushed on at greater speed, choosing a course in which he would never come within sight of the men, however carefully they might keep watch. At one spot he halted and looked behind, to catch a last glimpse of the tower before he rounded the base of a hill that would hide it from view. The moon was shining full upon it, and he hoped that the enemy would defer their threatened attack, as at the first attempt, until the door was shrouded in darkness.

On and on he hastened, for mile after mile, running down the slopes where he could, wading brooks, climbing bluffs, doggedly, without rest. When he came to an eminence where he could scan a long stretch of the comparatively level ground over which the horsemen would come, he looked eagerly for some sign of them; but though the greyish soil shone white in the moonlight and the outlines of things were very clear, he failed to descry them, and could not but think that they had encamped for the night. If it was so, still greater was the necessity for speed, since at any moment the attack on the tower might be begun and the frail barricade forced or blown up.

Every now and again he paused for a moment to listen, both for sounds from the village behind him and for the hoofs of the horses. In the still air of the night the crack of musket-shots might well reach him if the assault on the tower were begun. But he heard nothing save the rustle of falling water or the cry of a jackal, and he went on again, buoyed up by a great hope that he might be in time.

At length, heated and weary, after breasting a steep knoll he espied, in a well-sheltered hollow far below him, the glow of camp fires. With the caution habitual in a hill-man he crept down warily; if he should blunder on a hostile party the chances of saving the village and warning his father would be small indeed. Taking cover from bushes and angular projections of the hillside, he drew nearer and nearer to the camp. He had little fear of encountering a sentry, for the Pathans, in some matters highly cautious, are in others equally careless. And thus he came within earshot of the camp, and, lying flat on his face, peered down to spy if the men there were or were not his friends.

Now he was able to see the dark forms of a number of horses tethered to trees beyond the camp, and in the middle of the hollow, around the fires, the shapes of sleeping men. Still he was unable to distinguish them. He wriggled forward on all fours until he was within a spear-cast of them, and then caught sight of the red turban which his father always wore. No other man of the tribe wore a turban of that colour; but still it might be affected by one of another tribe, and Ahmed was not yet satisfied. So he crept very stealthily round the encampment until he reached the line of horses, and his heart leapt with delight when, on the very first of the line, he recognized the housings of Rahmut Khan's favourite arab. He hesitated no longer, but gave a low hail, and rising to his feet walked down towards the fires. His call, low as it was, had reached the ears of several of the men and of the chief himself. They rose, gripping their long muskets that lay beside them, and as they recognized Ahmed, they came forward to meet him, and asked him eagerly the meaning of this nocturnal visit.

It did not take him long to explain what had happened. Growling with anger, but breaking off to speak a fond word of approbation to Ahmed, the old chief called to his men to mount their horses. "Bah!" he cried, with a scornful intonation, "we will see if the eagle cannot deal with the night-hawk."

The blood of the old warrior was up; Minghal should rue the day when he conceived the folly of setting himself in rivalry to Rahmut Khan.

The chief was quick to form his plan. The first thing was to guard against any alarm among Minghal's men. It was necessary to silence the two men of the outpost. This would cause some delay, but it was of the first importance that they should neither see nor hear the advancing body, since by firing their matchlocks they could put their comrades in the village on the alert.

It was seven miles from the camp to the outpost. Rahmut durst not ride towards it with his full body of men, for the clatter of fifty horses' hoofs could not fail to be heard. Yet the case was urgent, for very soon, perhaps even at this moment, the tower might be assaulted. Delay there must be, but to lessen it as much as possible Rahmut decided to muffle the hoofs of three of the horses with strips of blanket, and to send three of his men with Ahmed to surprise the outpost. Meanwhile he himself with the rest of his party would ride in a circular course to the southward, so that they might sweep round the dangerous point at sufficient distance to be out of earshot.

The muffling was soon done, and the three chosen men set off, Ahmed being mounted behind one of them. Following his directions, they came unerringly to within a short distance of the hillock upon which the scouts were posted. Then they dismounted, and, Ahmed leading the way, they crept round and up so as to come on the men from above. The scouts were reclining in the cairn behind the fire, still talking in low tones. There was a sudden rush, a cry, a wild scuffle, and then silence.

Their task accomplished, the four returned to their horses and galloped across the country to join the main body, whom they met at the appointed rendezvous, a copse on rising ground some three miles south of the village. From that point Rahmut had decided to make the advance on foot, so that the chances of premature discovery by the enemy should be diminished. The moon was sinking in the sky; they could not see the tower from the place where they dismounted; but the favourable moment for Minghal's intended assault had certainly now come, and Ahmed expected within a little to hear the sound of firing.

The whole party, save a few men left to guard the horses, set off at a rapid march towards the village. It was possible that as they approached it a keen look-out might descry them from the tower, but they would be invisible to any one on a lower level. True, a man perched on the wall might see them; but Minghal, having posted scouts on a hillock commanding all the surrounding country for several miles, would be little likely to take this extra precaution.

Marching rapidly, the party had come within a few hundred yards of the village wall when they heard an explosion, followed by cries and the crack of muskets. The assault had begun. The gates being shut, it was only possible to enter the village by climbing the wall, and Ahmed led the band at the double to the spot where he had mounted when he fired the powder in the shed. Shouts and the sound of firing still came from the village; it was clear that a desperate fight was in progress; and since the din must drown all other noises, Rahmut's troops made no effort towards silence, but rushed with all speed.

The place for which Ahmed was making was on the opposite side of the village from the tower. Thus it was possible to climb the wall without attracting the attention of the enemy. Ahmed was first up; while some of the men were following him one by one he ran round to the gate on the chance that it might be left unguarded. He would then throw it open and give admittance to the rest of his party. But when he came within sight of it he found that a sentry was on guard there. He dared not risk the sound of a scuffle, so he slipped back to his friends and waited until the whole party had climbed the wall. Then, drawing his talwar, Rahmut put himself at the head of his men and led them through the streets towards the tower.

Their advance was not at first seen, for the villagers, drawn out of their houses by the sounds of fighting, had flocked to the neighbourhood of the tower, and were watching the progress of Minghal's attack. The barricade at the foot of the winding stair had been blown up, and a fierce contest was now going on. Ahsan and his comrades were making a stout resistance, buoyed up by the belief that their chief was coming to their help; but they were on the point of being overpowered when a great shout arose from the street, and Rahmut and his men burst through the ranks of the onlookers and fell upon the rear of Minghal's force. The surprise was complete. The new-comers laid about them doughtily with their terrible swords; their enemies fell into a panic, and in a few minutes the whole crowd, save those who had already fallen, were running in every direction. Many of them were cut down as they fled. Some made straight for the gate, which the men stationed there had thrown open at the first sign of what was happening. Among the fugitives was Minghal Khan. Rahmut had ordered his men to take the rival chief alive, but in the darkness it was difficult to distinguish one from many, and Minghal made good his escape with a few of his followers, and fled away into the night.

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

The Return of Sherdil

To pursue the fugitives was impossible in the darkness; nor, indeed, were Rahmut's men capable of further exertions. They were worn out by two days and nights of hard riding. Before proceeding to carry out the prime object of his expedition, the old chief had turned aside to raid the village of an enemy near the frontier, and had scarcely completed his work there when he was spied by a troop of the Feringhis, who chased him with such pertinacity that he was forced to abandon his purposed quest. Having secured, therefore, those members of Minghal's band who had life in them and were not too severely wounded to escape, Rahmut ordered the gates to be again closed and the community to rest.

Before he sought his own couch, however, the old chief heard from Ahsan the full story of what had happened during his absence. Enraged as he was at Minghal's action, he was still more delighted with the part Ahmed had played. He embraced the lad fondly, called him by endearing names in the extravagant Oriental way, and declared that, after punishing Minghal, he would devote himself in earnest to the quest of a suitable bride for his heir.

In the morning he caused all the villagers to assemble in the open space before the tower, and bitterly upbraided those who had tamely submitted to the enemy. He ordered his nephew Dilasah, who had been severely wounded, to be brought out among the people, and, cursing him in the name of the Prophet, he bade all men to witness that he disowned him utterly. Then he waxed eloquent in praise of Ahmed, about whose neck he hung a chain of silver cunningly wrought, and called on the people to recognize him as their future chief. And, finally, he announced that Minghal Khan should not go unpunished. When the time was ripe his enemy should lick the dust.

When the assembly was dismissed, Rahmut called his chief men about him to discuss the means of taking vengeance on Minghal. Ahmed felt a glow of pride at being admitted to the council. In the ordinary way he could not have expected so great an honour until he had proved himself in actual warfare and become a married man. But the old chief was so much pleased with his coolness and daring, that he was resolved to give the lad a real share in the activities of the tribe.

There was a long discussion as to the method by which reprisal might be made on Minghal Khan. It was speedily agreed that to attack his village openly was impracticable, or would at least expose them to the risk of disaster. Minghal had lost some twenty men in the fight, but it was well known that he could still put eighty or ninety good warriors in the field, whereas Rahmut had but forty or fifty. Success could only be hoped for from a stratagem. But Minghal, while inferior as a warrior to Rahmut, was more than his match in wiles. Rahmut, indeed, disdained trickery of any kind; he had won his reputation by sheer prowess and skill in generalship, and if it came to a contest in cunning, Minghal would easily bear the palm. No doubt the wily chief would expect retaliation, and would be fully prepared to meet it. No one among the council was able to suggest a likely scheme, and it broke up without having come to a decision.

Two days passed, and still no plan had suggested itself. On the third day, there rode up to the village a tall, black-bearded horseman clad in worn and tattered garments of dust colour, and carrying sword, lance and carbine. When he had come within a short distance of the gate Ahsan shouted—

"Halt, there! Who are you, and what is your business?"

"Knowst thou me not, Ahsan?" came the reply. "Dost not remember Sherdil, son of Assad? Thou didst thrash me often enough, and truly the soft part of me will never forget thy thwackings."

"Why, Sherdil, thy beard has grown since those days. I remember thee well. Come in, and say why thou ridest in garments of so strange a make."

Sherdil rode in, eyed curiously by the crowd of men and boys whom the brief conversation had drawn to the spot. He was a magnificent specimen of a Pathan, tall, handsome of feature, well made, and his horse was a match for him. Dismounting, he led his horse by the bridle and went to pay his respects to the chief.

Sherdil had left the village nearly eight years before, when he was a youth of seventeen. He had been the wildest and most unruly boy of the tribe, always in mischief, showing no respect for his elders—one day he had called a holy sayad "old scaldhead," and laughed when his father thrashed him for it. He had been incorrigibly lazy at school: not all the mullah's thwackings drove into his thick head the scraps from the Koran which formed the greater part of his lessons, and he was always very rebellious at having to fast from sunrise to sunset in Ramzan, the ninth month. But in tent-pegging and racing and sword-play he beat all boys of his age, and indeed many of the men; and when he insisted on joining them in their expeditions, which happened at the age of sixteen, he excelled them all as a highway robber and a horse-thief.

When he was seventeen he ran away, and nothing had since been heard of him. His mother grieved, for he was her firstborn; but his father, having three more sons, was not greatly distressed, for the boy had always been a trouble to him. And now he had come back, grown out of knowledge, with a fine black beard and the look of a seasoned warrior.

His father, Assad, as in duty bound, made a great feast in honour of the returned prodigal. He invited a great number of his neighbours, and regaled them with the flesh of sheep and goats and—this was a great luxury—fowls, and beautifully light chapatis baked by his wife Fatima herself, and luscious sweetmeats made of honey and ghi; but the only drink was water. And having been well fed, Sherdil related the story of his life since he had left Shagpur—a good riddance, as most of the folk thought.

It was a stirring tale, of wild doings on the borders, among men who kept the passes into the hills and lived amid inaccessible rocks, whence they swept down upon unsuspecting travellers and merchants in the plains, and even pushed their forays across the frontiers among the sahib-log. His audience uttered many an exclamation of wonderment and admiration as he recounted his exploits, and you may be sure he did not minimize them. The men about him were robbers and brigands and murderers themselves, but their deeds faded into insignificance beside the bold and desperate adventures of Sherdil. Ahmed, who was among the company, listened with all his frame thrilling. He had a faint recollection of Sherdil as a big fellow who, rough as he was, had treated him with a certain kindness, and had shown him first how to snare a rabbit. And he felt a good deal of envy of this fine stalwart fellow who had seen and done so much.

One story of Sherdil's made the company hilarious. The chief to whom he for a time attached himself—one Dilawur, a native of Jahangia, a village on the Cabul river—heard one day that a wealthy Hindu shopkeeper was to be married. He instantly determined to profit by the bridegroom's happiness. With his men, among whom Sherdil was one, he lay in wait on the bank of the Indus at a place which the Hindu must pass on his way to the bride's house. When the expectant bridegroom came in sight, all bedizened with wristlets and chains and jewels, the brigands, armed with pistol, sword and dagger, fell upon the party, seized the luckless man, dragged him to the river bank, and thrust him into an inflated cow-hide. Then Sherdil mounted upon this monstrous bladder, and paddled it across the river. When the rest were across, the Hindu was carried away into the hills, and Dilawur's scribe—for he could not write himself—penned a letter to his sorrowing friends, informing them that their relative was well and happy, and would be restored to them fat and jolly for the little sum of two hundred rupees.

"Wah! wah!" said the company in chorus. "And what next, O lion of the hills?"

And Sherdil, whose name means "lion-hearted," chuckled and said—

"Why, did ye ever know a Hindu who would pay a price without bargaining? And the richer they are, the more they haggle. 'Two hundred rupees? No, no: we cannot afford that. The sickness fell on our goats last winter; we are very poor; our friend is very dear to us, but he will be too dear if we pay that price. We will give a hundred rupees, when we are sure our friend has lost no flesh.' But Dilawur Khan has not the patience of a camel. When he got their foolish answer he sent me with another letter, saying that if the two hundred rupees were not in his hands within seven days, he would strike off their dear relative's head and send it them as an offering of peace; only having been at the expense of feeding him with good fattening food all that time, he would require two thousand rupees as recompense."

"Wah! wah!" shouted the delighted hearers, to whose sense of justice this appealed no less than to their sense of humour; "and what was the answer?"

"Why, the answer was two hundred rupees, full tale, and a present of goats beside. And the Hindu—whom fear and the delay of his marriage had most marvellously thinned—was restored to his home, with good wishes for a long life and many sons—for our sons to pluck likewise."

And in the midst of the laughter this story evoked, one of the guests asked a question—

"But why, O Sherdil, hast thou given up the dress of thy forefathers—the chogah, and the blue trousers drawn in at the ankles, and the sandals? Why dost thou wear this strange garb, like the dust of the plain or corn of the fields in colour?"

"Eha, that is a strange story too," said Sherdil, and he drew himself up. "I am a servant of the sahib-log."

"Hai! hai!" gasped the company in astonishment. "A servant of the sahib-log! the accursed Feringhis! sayest thou, O Sherdil?"

"'Tis true. My coat is the colour of corn, say you? yes, but it is the colour of the lion also. Is not my name Sherdil? A great sahib, his name Lumsden, heard of me; he knows everything; no man who does brave deeds escapes him. Having heard of my great daring in the hills, he sent one to me who had served him long and was as brave as myself, and begged me, if it were not too much trouble, to go and see him. And then he spoke fairly to me: the sahibs are just and speak true; he told me that he had learnt somewhat of my doings, and asked whether it would suit my honour to join a company of warriors like myself—Afridis and Gurkhas, Sikhs and Hazaras, Waziris and even Kafirs, many bloods but one spirit. And before I made my answer he showed me them at their sports, and verily, brothers, never did I see such skill among so many men. I saw them throw the spear at a mark, and doing nazabaze, which is, to fix a stake of a span length in the ground and take it up on the spear's point when passing at a full gallop; and, for another sport, putting an orange on the top of a bamboo three spans high, and slicing it through with the sword as they ride by at full speed. 'By my beard!' I thought, 'these are fit mates for me;' and I asked the sahib whether I might try the nazabaze myself. And he allowed me, and when I caught up the stake on my spear point he smote his hands together and said words in his tongue to Hodson Sahib that stood by him, and then he offered me good wages to be one of his men—Guides, they call them. And I agreed, and therefore it is, my friends, that I wear this garb, which being of the colour of earth cannot be seen from afar so clearly as our own garments."

Assad, for the first time in his life proud of this son of his, swelled with gratification.

"Well did I name thee Sherdil, my son," he said. "But tell us, what dost thou do for the pay these Feringhis—curst unbelievers—give thee? Assuredly it is easy work, or thou wouldst not do it."

Sherdil laughed.

"You ask what we do, my father—we of Lumsden Sahib's Guides. We do what we are bid to do—is not that strange? It is strange to me myself, I own; for I never did what you bade me, father. But with the sahibs—well, that is a different matter. They say, Do this! and we do it, with a cheerful countenance. Canst thou see Sherdil handling a pick-axe? Say we have no water, and the sahib wishes a well to be sunk. We of the Guides do it, and I, Sherdil, am the most diligent among them. Say we need bricks to make a wall; the sahib bids us mould the clay and burn it, and lo! the bricks are made. Say the sahib desires to go a-hunting—and a mighty hunter he is, by Allah!—he bids us go into the jungle as beaters, and gives us rounds of ammunition for ourselves. And if we do well in our tasks, he gives us goats and rice, and after the feast we sing songs and make merry."

"But this is not work fit for warriors of the hills," said Assad, looking a little blank. "Dost never fight and steal?"

"To steal is forbidden," replied Sherdil; "it is against the sahibs' law. But fight!—do we not fight, my father! Didst never hear how we fought at Multan, with Fatteh Khan? And how we took the fort of Goringhar, Rasul Khan being our leader? Lo! I have many tales to tell; they will last the days of my leave. Yes, we fight, when we get the chance. Why, only four days ago we spied a troop of fifty or more hill-men away there in the hills, and we chased them for two days and nights, but they would never stand to take a shot at us, so much are we feared."

Inquiry soon discovered that Sherdil had been among the troops which had kept Rahmut Khan on the run, and loud was his laughter when he learnt that it was his own chief whom they had been chasing. He became serious, however, when he heard of what had befallen the village during the chief's absence, and cursed Minghal Khan with the true vigour of a Pathan. And on being told that no plans had yet been formed for the punishment of the offender, he vowed by the beard of the Prophet that some way should be found before his leave was expired.

Next day he sought an interview with the chief, and had not been in conversation with him more than half-an-hour before Rahmut called his council together and asked their opinion of an enterprise Sherdil had suggested. It won their hearty admiration. One of Minghal's sources of revenue consisted of a tribute levied on traders passing to and from Central Asia. Their route lay within a few miles of his village, and, indeed, sometimes they made use of a change-house in it. They usually travelled in bodies of considerable size, and sufficiently well armed to offer a good defence against marauders. But they found it profitable to placate the principal chiefs through whose territories they passed by paying a tribute varying with the importance of the chiefs; and the chiefs on their side recognized that their interests were better served by the regular income thus derived than by forays which might or might not be successful, and which would ultimately have the effect of scaring away the trade caravans altogether.

Sherdil had suggested that advantage of this fact might be taken to practise a trick on Minghal. He proposed that a small party of Rahmut's men should be equipped as traders, and thus gain admittance to Minghal's village. Then, at night, they might find some means of seizing his tower, and while the village was in confusion Rahmut could attack it with the main body of his men.

The old chief himself, true to his character, was at first reluctant to fall in with this cunning scheme. He pointed out that Minghal's attack on his own tower had failed, and foresaw many possibilities of failure in the proposed adventure. He would have preferred to wait until he could have gathered a sufficient reinforcement to enable him to make a direct attack in force on his enemy. But Sherdil laughed away his doubts; the burden of his reasoning was that against a wily enemy like Minghal, wiles must be employed. And as for the matter of the tower, and a possible failure there, that was not worth considering.

"Minghal had no Sherdil and no Ahmed," he said, with a magnificent gesture. "I, Sherdil, have learnt somewhat from the sahibs, and has not Ahmed the blood of sahibs in his veins? We are more than a match for Minghal, believe me."

Rahmut frowned, and threw an anxious glance at Ahmed when this reference was made to his English birth. This admiration of the sahibs was little to his liking; but he discreetly said nothing of what was passing in his mind, and the general opinion being favourable to the scheme, he gave his assent to it. Then he threw himself keenly enough into the preparations suggested by Sherdil. He declared that if the stratagem was to be attempted, it must be done thoroughly. Any carelessness would invite discovery, and discovery would mean death to those engaged in it.

Sherdil undertook the arrangements. The first step was to select the members of the pretended trading party. Five well-tried warriors were chosen from among those who had accompanied the chief on his recent expedition. Having been absent from the village during Minghal's attack, they were not likely to be recognized by his men when they entered his village. And Sherdil himself begged that Ahmed might be allowed to join the party. To this the chief at first objected. The enterprise was fraught with great danger; Minghal would like nothing better than to get the chief's heir into his hands; and Ahmed, having taken so prominent a part in the defence of the tower, would certainly be recognized. But Sherdil had conceived a great admiration for the part Ahmed had played in resisting Minghal's raid, especially for his exploit in blowing up the powder. He assured Rahmut Khan that the lad could easily be sufficiently disguised; Ahmed himself pleaded very hard to be allowed to join the expedition; and the old chief at last, bethinking himself that, if successful, it might serve as an additional bond between Ahmed and the villagers and strengthen his consideration with them, gave his consent.

"Go, my son, and God go with thee," he said, laying his hands fondly on the boy's head. "But come back to me, for I am well stricken in years, and I would fain go to the grave happy, knowing that thou wilt be lord of Shagpur, and not Dilasah."

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

Reprisals

At sunset of the day on which Sherdil's plan was adopted, the little party of seven set off from Shagpur in the opposite direction from Minghal's village. Their goal was a small town on the frontier, many miles away, where in the bazar they might obtain the articles necessary to their proper equipment as traders. Sherdil, who had doffed his khaki uniform and assumed the native dress of his village, thought it best to start at night so as to evade any spies whom Minghal might have placed in the neighbourhood.

The journey was to have a great importance in the life of Ahmed, son of Rahmut Khan. He rode close beside Sherdil all the way, and when they halted at roadside serais for rest and refreshment, those two ate together and squatted or lay side by side. The things of which Sherdil had spoken at his father's feast had fired Ahmed's imagination. Though the impressions of his early childhood had become dim, and the people among whom he had then lived were mere shadows, he remembered that he was of English birth, and Sherdil's words had stirred within him a desire to know more about his own people. In the first days of his life at Shagpur he had sometimes thought of running away, but he soon found this to be impossible, and of late the desire had quite left him. The old chief, he knew, had saved his life on that terrible day when his real father was killed. That was a tie between them which could not easily be broken. And he had now become so thoroughly imbued with Pathan ideas and customs that he never thought of any other destiny than that of Rahmut Khan's successor. But his contact with a man who was actually in the service of the sahibs had roused within him a curiosity to see the people to whom he rightly belonged, and he plied Sherdil with questions about them.

Further, Sherdil's references to great fights in which the corps of Guides had been engaged appealed strongly to his spirit of adventure, and he pressed the man to tell him more.

"What was that fight at Multan of which you spoke?" he asked, as they took their siesta in the hot hours of the next day.

"Ah! the fight of Fatteh Khan," replied Sherdil. "'Tis a brave tale, and I will tell it thee. 'Twas seven years and more ago. We were in the trenches before Multan. Lumsden Sahib was absent; there were only three sahib officers with us. One day a kasid galloped into our camp with news that a party of the enemy's horse, some twenty strong, had driven off a herd of camels from their grazing near the camp of General Whish. Fatteh Khan was our risaldar, and he called to us to mount and follow him to punish those marauders. We galloped off, no more than seventy, the kasid going before to show the way. And lo! when we had ridden three miles, and came to the place he had spoken of, we discovered, not twenty, but the whole host of the enemy's cavalry, full twelve hundred men. They had been sent, as we learnt, to cut off a convoy of treasure which was said to be on the way to our general's camp; but they failed in this, and were now wending back to their own city.

"Did Fatteh Khan bid us halt and return? That is not Fatteh Khan. Wah! he cried to us to ride like the wind, and the enemy, seeing us, halted, not knowing what this strange thing might be. And straight through them we rode, with sword and lance, and when we had come out on the other side we wheeled about and clove through them again. Wah! they were like a flock of sheep, witless, huddling together, springing this way and that without any sense. Again we rode into them, though our arms were weary and our horses much spent. And then that great host, crying on Allah to preserve them, broke apart and fled for their lives, and we pursued them up to the very walls of their city. That is one of the deeds of Fatteh Khan with Lumsden Sahib's Guides, of whom I am not the least."

With other stories like this Sherdil beguiled the hours of rest, and Ahmed became more and more eager to do something in emulation of the Guides. Perhaps this expedition on which he was soon to be engaged would provide him with an opportunity; he vowed that if it came he would not let it slip.

Four days later the party of seven was returning. But it presented a very different appearance now. The men had changed their costume so as to appear like peaceable traders. They wore white turbans and long coats girt about with a sash. All weapons save long talwars slung at their belts—for even traders must be prepared to make some defence of their wares—had disappeared. They had two camels, loaded with bales which might very well contain cloth. The youngest of the party, who, when he left Shagpur, was a smooth-cheeked youth with a ruddy duskiness of complexion, was now a shade or two darker in hue, and bore a thin black moustache on his upper lip.

These transformations had been effected within a day's march of Minghal's village. The party made their slow way between hill and plain, so timing themselves that they came to the gate a little before sunset. To the customary demand of the gate-keeper that they should say who they were and what their business, Sherdil replied—

"We are traders from Rawal Pindi to Cabul, but a small party, as you see, and we dare not encamp for the night in the open, lest some accursed sons of perdition fall upon us and rob us. All the world knows of Minghal Khan's benevolence to strangers, and we beg a refuge for the night, O gate-keeper."

"And what do ye offer in return for this favour?" asked the gate-keeper.

"'Tis unworthy of your chief's illustriousness, we fear," said Sherdil humbly, "but such as it is we make it with grateful hearts. 'Tis indeed a quantity of cloth, of good weaving, and such as the Amir of Cabul approves; therefore, unworthy as it is, we yet hope it may find favour in the eyes of Minghal Khan."

The gate was thrown open without more ado. The traders were led to the village change-house, where they stalled the camels and their horses, Sherdil then immediately setting out with one of the men to convey the present of cloth to Minghal. When he returned, he reported with great satisfaction that the chief was residing in his tower, which was distant no more than eighty yards away. And then, with Ahmed's assistance, he unloaded from the back of one of the camels a small wooden case, which they carried carefully into the one large room of which the guest-portion of the change-house consisted. There were only two other travellers in the room—big bearded Afghans, one of whom inquired curiously what was the contents of the case which the new-comers had brought with them.

"Porcelain from Delhi," replied Sherdil at once. "Care is needed, lest it be shivered to atoms." And he laid it down in a corner near the charpoy placed for him, and covered it with a roll of cloth.

The travellers ate a simple supper, and conversed freely with the Afghans; then they all laid themselves down, and there was silence save for some few snores and the grunting of the camels, which was heard very clearly through the thin wooden wall.

Some hours later, about three o'clock in the morning, there was a slight and almost noiseless scuffle within the change-house. The two Afghans were suddenly awakened from sleep by rough hands laid upon them. The flickering oil lamp gave little light; the Afghans' sleepy eyes but half apprehended the meaning of what they saw; and their tongues suffered from a sudden impediment, for, as they opened their mouths to cry out, gags were slipped in, and fierce voices muttered in their ears a warning to be quiet and lie still, or worse would befall them. Their fellow-guests, the apparently peaceable dealers in cloth and porcelain, with wonderful dexterity and speed tied their feet and hands together, and the Afghans had not recovered from their amazement when they saw two of the merchants creeping out of the door, carrying the small case of precious porcelain between them.

Meanwhile the other members of the party, after a little fumbling among their bales of merchandise, had withdrawn from the folds of innocent cloth a musket apiece, and after the departure of their fellows stood just behind the door in the attitude of men awaiting a call. One of them peered round the door; another slightly drew aside the slats of the adjacent window—an unglazed opening in the wall—and looked eagerly across the street. There was no moon; the village was in darkness; but the forms of the two men who had gone out could be dimly seen as they crept stealthily along by the wall in the direction of the tower between them and the gate.

The two reached the foot of the tower and laid their burden down—gently, as befitted a box containing precious porcelain—at the door. Then one of them stooped lower, and appeared to thrust something into a hole near the bottom of the box. The watchman on the wall must have been half-asleep, or he would have noticed a sudden spark at the foot of the tower. It flashed but for a moment; then the two men, bending low, hastened back stealthily by the way they had gone, came to the change-house, and slipping in by the still half-open door, closed it behind them.

They waited for perhaps a minute, and there was not a sound within the guest-chamber save the slight smothered grunting of the Afghans through their gags. Then from without there came a sudden roar; the ground trembled, the building rocked as if it would fall about their heads, and the waiting men, drawing a long breath, threw open the door and ran with great nimbleness towards the tower The street was filled with acrid fumes; here and there men were crying out, but the merchants paid no heed, but rushed through the smoke and plunged into the yawning chasm where the tower door had been. The opening was clogged with burning wood and fragments of masonry; the intruders stumbled over these, coughing up the smoke that entered their lungs, and groped their way up the narrow winding stairway.

Cries from above assailed them. At the top of the first flight of steps stood a man armed with a long spear. The stairway was so narrow that only one man could pass at a time, and the man at the head of the mounting party, coming too suddenly upon the spearman, received a thrust in the breast and toppled backward. But the man behind him slipped aside to avoid his falling body, and caught the spear before it could be withdrawn, dragging the spearman forward. Two others—they were Sherdil and Ahmed—seized the occasion to squeeze past him; but they gained the top of the flight only to see the two men who, behind him, had been content to let him bear the brunt of the attack, dash back across the narrow passage to a door on the other side. The passage was lit by a small oil lamp—a wick floating in a shallow saucer. By its light Sherdil and Ahmed saw the men fling themselves through the door into the room beyond. They sprang after them, but the door was slammed in their faces and the bolt shot.

And now great shouts floated up the stairway from below. They were cries of surprise and fear, calls for arms, mingled with the fierce war-shout of Pathan warriors. Some little while after the party of merchants had found entrance to the village, Rahmut Khan with all his fighting men had come up in the darkness and lain in hiding beyond the walls. The explosion had been the signal for an attack on the village. They had dashed forward; some had forced the gate, others had scaled the walls, and they now held the village at their mercy, for the explosion had been so startling, and the attack so sudden, that any effective defence was out of the question.

Meanwhile, Sherdil and his band, finding themselves blocked by the bolted door, had sought for some means of breaking it down. Their chief's quarrel was with Minghal Khan, and it was Minghal Khan whom they were most eager to secure. Some minutes passed before axes could be found, then with a few shattering blows the door was broken in. Sherdil sprang into the room, followed closely by Ahmed and the rest. The birds had flown. The room was small, with one narrow window in the outer wall. A rope hung from it; the men had descended by this and made their escape. Ahmed rushed down the stairs to inform his father, and to send men out in pursuit. Sherdil hastened to the upper apartments in the hope that Minghal might not have been one of the two who had escaped. But he found no one in the tower except the women and children.

The surprise had been entirely successful save in this one matter of the escape of Minghal. The village had fallen to Rahmut almost without a blow. Indeed, save for the one man who had been speared at the head of the steps, and one who had been shot by the sentry before he himself was cut down, the victory had been bloodless. Rahmut's men patrolled the streets until dawn. Then he called the people to a meeting and reassured them as to his intentions. Without doubt they had been led away, he told them, in their attack on Shagpur, by the evil designs of their chief, Minghal. Minghal was now gone—had fled away to escape disgrace and humiliation. But his cowardice was a disgrace still greater. None but a coward would have taken flight thus, leaving his men without a leader and his family defenceless.

"Minghal has a serpent's cunning, but the heart of a hare," cried the old chief. "He is not fit for rule. He tried to take my village, and failed; and we have shown that even at tricks we can beat him. I will punish no man for Minghal's ill-doings. I myself will be your chief, and you shall be my people."

The men sent out in pursuit of Minghal returned by and by unsuccessful. In that hilly country there were many hiding-places where he might dwell. In the afternoon Rahmut returned to Shagpur, leaving one of his principal lieutenants in charge with a score of men, and taking a like number of Minghal's men with him for safety's sake.

Sherdil received great praise for his skilful stratagem. Rahmut wished to keep him at Shagpur, offering him great inducements to remain. But Sherdil was not to be tempted. He had eaten Lumsden Sahib's salt, he said, and when his furlough was over he would return to his duties at Mardan, the head-quarters of the Guides. Perhaps later on, when his term of service had expired and he was granted a pension, he might settle in his native village; but for the present he was content to remain one of the Guides and serve the sirkar. And when, a few days later, he donned his khaki again and rode away to rejoin his comrades, no one in Shagpur was sorrier than Ahmed. Sherdil's departure had left a blank.

CHAPTER THE SIXTH

In the Nets

The capture of Minghal's village gave such an accession of strength to Rahmut Khan that he was soon emboldened to plan an expedition of greater importance than any he had undertaken before. He heard that the chief of a small hill village had refused to pay the Government revenue, and that Sir John Lawrence, the Commissioner in Peshawar, would shortly dispatch a force to the village to enforce the payment. The community being a small one, it was not likely that the British force would be numerous; and Rahmut conceived the idea of laying an ambush for it on its return and running off with the revenue. He had a motive beyond that of the mere acquisition of wealth. He felt that a successful attack on a British force would greatly enhance his prestige, and strengthen his hold on the allegiance of his new clansmen.

The project was talked over in council, and the only man who ventured to oppose it was old Ahsan the gate-keeper, who, since his defence of the tower, had enjoyed a much higher consideration with the chief. Ahsan warned Rahmut against measuring his strength with the British. It was one thing to make an occasional raid on the frontier stations for the purpose of stealing horses, and quite another to attack a properly equipped force. But his warning fell on deaf ears, and no one more vehemently opposed him than the chief's nephew Dilasah, who, since recovering from the wound he had received in the attack on the village, had professed repentance and left nothing undone to win his uncle's favour. The old man, being of a frank and unsuspicious disposition, freely pardoned Dilasah for his former ill-behaviour and his dealings with Minghal, and was greatly delighted one day when the man told him that he gave up all pretensions to the chiefship and admitted Ahmed's claims. Dilasah had a certain reputation for shrewdness and bravery, and his voice, being unhesitatingly in favour of the scheme Rahmut proposed, outweighed what was regarded as the more timorous counsel of Ahsan.

The expedition having been decided on, Rahmut sent Dilasah himself to Peshawar in the disguise of a pedlar, to discover what he could of the composition of the British force and the date of its setting out. Meanwhile he was troubled by the request that Ahmed had made to be allowed to join the expedition. The boy had shown himself brave and resourceful; and Rahmut felt that if he took arms against his countrymen the last link would be removed between him and them. On the other hand, he did not fail to see that the expedition would be a dangerous one, and though he believed that he could carry it through successfully, he was anxious to keep Ahmed out of harm's way, and especially to run no risk of his falling into English hands. If Ahmed should be taken prisoner, the old chief feared lest the contact with Englishmen should awaken race feelings now dormant, and the boy be lost to him. So, after much hesitation and much pleading on the part of Ahmed, the old chief told him kindly enough that he was not to accompany him, but to be left in charge of the village during his absence.

Ahmed was deeply disappointed. Rahmut gave him no reasons for his decision; he was a wise old man; reasons could be combated and overcome. When Ahmed asked Ahsan why his father was so loath to let him try his manhood, Ahsan confessed that he did not know, which was true and yet untrue; for, though the chief had not told him, Ahsan had made a shrewd guess.

"Rahmut does not wish it ever to be said of you, 'He takes off his clothes before he reaches the water,'" said Ahsan, quoting a proverb against precipitancy. "Why fear?" he went on. "'Milk even in good time becomes curds.' He who has patience wins. It will come to you in good time to lead men and do great things."

"I hate your proverbs," said Ahmed; "they have no comfort in them. Will my father never see that I am grown up?"

"Thou wouldst not fight against thy own countrymen, Ahmed-ji?"

"Why not? Sherdil fights against his countrymen, why not I? And they are my countrymen no longer; my countrymen are here. What have I to do with these strangers who come lording it over the free people of the hills?"

"Hush, Ahmed-ji!" said the old man. "Children cry to their parents. To speak ill of the Feringhis is to speak ill of yourself. Let be, my son; what a man desires he will gain if it be God's will."

And Ahmed, being a sensible boy, did not nurse his disappointment. But perhaps the old chief would have changed his mind had he known that his refusal had only made the boy more eager to see the white men of whom Sherdil had told him so much.

Dilasah presently returned from his journey to Peshawar. His information was that the expedition was to start in a week's time, and to consist of a single troop of Sikh horsemen under the command of one sahib. He had learnt the route it was to follow; it would pass within three days' march of Shagpur. Rahmut praised him, and did not inquire how he had made these discoveries; but Ahsan put the question bluntly when the chief called his council together and told them what he had learnt.

"It was the talk of the bazar," said Dilasah, looking astonished.

"Then it cannot be true," said Ahsan. "Would the Feringhis let their purpose be known? Are there not hundreds who would carry the news to Lal Jan, the chief, and warn him, so that he had time to get away into the hills? If it was the talk of the bazar, 'tis very certain that things will be otherwise."

Dilasah appeared for a moment to be taken aback. Ahsan was certainly right, and the older members of the council showed their agreement with his reasoning. But Dilasah, after a hesitation so brief as to be scarcely noticeable, said with a disdainful smile—

"The ass does not know how to laugh. Is Ahsan the only man of knowledge and understanding? The knowing bird is not caught in the snare, and I, Dilasah, am not a fledgeling. The expedition was in truth the talk of the bazar, but I did not swallow what was said there. How should the truth be known? I sought out in Peshawar a holy fakir whom I know. He hates the infidel Feringhis, and he has means of finding out their plans, most marvellous. The talk of the bazar and the truth were as different as fire and water; and what I have told is not the bazar-talk, but the truth as I learnt it from the fakir."

"Then, if he hates the Feringhis, will he not warn Lal Jan, and so Lal Jan will fly to the hills with his treasure, and the Feringhis will get nothing, so that when our people fall upon them their bags will be empty?"

"Not so," said Dilasah, in answer to this further question of Ahsan. "He is no friend to Lal Jan; Lal Jan is, indeed, a thorn in his quilt; he will gain double delight from the spoiling, first of Lal Jan, and afterwards of the Feringhis. But why talk thus? If Ahsan, who is old and toothless, thinks himself so clever, let him go to Peshawar and learn the truth of things. As for me, I have done the chief's bidding; it is for him to command."

And with the air of one who had been deeply offended, Dilasah left the council.

After he had gone, Rahmut asked Ahsan why he threw doubt on the accuracy of the information; and when the old man confessed that he had no reason save a distrust of Dilasah, the chief was angry. Dilasah could have no object in bringing false information, for he was to accompany the chief in the proposed raid, and would suffer equally with the rest if it should fail. It was decided in the end to accept his report as accurate, and preparations for the expedition were hurried on.

A few days later, Rahmut Khan left the village at the head of eighty men—the pick of his own and of Minghal's warriors. Ahmed, left behind with a score of fighting men to defend the village, watched his father's departure with envy. How he longed that the place at the chief's right hand had been bestowed on him instead of on Dilasah! But it was useless to repine; he could only swallow his disappointment and hope that during his father's absence something might happen to give him an opportunity for active work.

Rahmut could scarcely be expected to return before a fortnight. The British force would take some time in the work assigned to it, and the chief's plan was to ambush it on its return journey, when in possession of the revenue it had been sent to collect. Ahmed went every day to the top of the tower to scan the surrounding country, but saw nothing to attract his attention. Life went on in the village from day to day as usual, the fighting men spending most of the time in playing games of chance, the workers toiling for an hour or two and idling the rest. Ahmed was of too active a disposition to remain idle. He practised swordsmanship with one or two of the men, went hunting in the hills behind the village with some of the youths, and induced some of the best riders to join him in the game of nazabaze, in which he proved himself easily first.

And then one day, the fifteenth since his father's departure, he saw from his look-out on the tower a band of horsemen approaching. There was great excitement in the village when he told them the news; nobody had any doubt that the chief was returning successful, and all excitedly speculated on the amount of booty he had taken. Ahmed watched the approach of the horsemen as eagerly as any one. At first a mere blot on the sky, sometimes disappearing behind a copse or in a valley, the band gradually became more distinct and definite, and after two hours he was able to assure himself that it did indeed consist of his father's men.

But it seemed somewhat diminished, and when, an hour later, it had come so near that he could distinguish the individuals composing it, he suddenly caught Ahsan by the arm and cried—

"Where is my father? I do not see him; do you?"

"Your eyes are better than mine, Ahmed-ji," replied the old man. "Without doubt your father is there in the midst, and you will see him by and by."

But after a few more minutes Ahmed cried again—

"He is not there. I do not see his red turban or his white beard. I see Dilasah, but not my father."

And then, feeling no little alarm at the chief's absence, he ran down to the foot of the tower, mounted his horse, and galloped out to meet the advancing band.

"Where is my father, Dilasah?" he cried, while he was still some distance away.

"Hai! hai! he is not here," replied the man, with a gloomy look.

"But where is he? He is not dead?"

"No, truly he is not dead, praise to Allah! Not one of us is killed, Ahmed; but my honoured uncle, with some few more, is a prisoner with those pigs of English, woe is me!"

"A prisoner! Then he failed?"

"We failed, all of us. We came to the place which we had appointed for our ambush, and there we waited three days, and on the third day we saw the accursed Feringhi and his men coming down the defile towards us. Then we split up into three bands, as we had arranged, and my reverend uncle went with one band to one side, and I with my band to the other side, Rajab going with the third to the end of the defile to cut off the enemy when they should seek to escape."

"And what then?"

"Woe is me! From our post high up in the rocks we could see the chief with his band creeping on foot round on the other side of the defile, and there on a sudden men seemed to spring out of the earth; my honoured uncle had walked into a trap without doubt set for him by those accursed sons of dogs. In an instant he was surrounded, and what could he do with his few men against twice the number of Sikhs? There was no time even to fight, for the Sikhs were armed with the short guns that fire quickly, and the white-faced Feringhi called in a loud voice to the chief to yield or he would be a dead man. What could he do? And so he was made prisoner with all his band."

"And you—did you nothing to help him?"

"Nay, how could I tell that Sikhs were not coming on my side also to encompass me?"

"You ran away?"

"What could I do? If we had fired a shot we should have betrayed ourselves to the enemy, and we were not strong enough to fight them when the chief and his party were gone. And there was danger that Rajab, who was at the end of the defile behind us and had not seen what had befallen the chief, might fire and so be discovered also; and it seemed best to join him, so that our company should be stronger in case the enemy attacked us."

A youth of Pathan blood would without doubt have burst forth into shrill cursing and reviling; there would have been a fierce war of words, and by and by perhaps a knife-thrust. But Ahmed never displayed anger in the Pathan way; in this he was often a puzzle to the people of Shagpur. He said not a word now in answer to Dilasah. The lines of his face had hardened; his lips were pressed tight together; a strange look had come into his grey eyes. He rode at a quick foot-pace beside Dilasah back to the village, listening to the man's repetition of the story of the capture. He listened to it again in the village, where Dilasah told it in the street, and the people made great lamentation with cries and groans. And then, when the horsemen had dismounted and gone to their homes, he accompanied Ahsan to his little hut, and asked the old man what he thought of the things that had happened.

"Dilasah is a coward—that is sure," said Ahsan. "Did we not know it? He fled away as a lark flies at the first throw. A man fights; a dog turns tail. 'Tis an evil fate has befallen the master, and this village of Shagpur also."

"Is Dilasah's story true, think you?" asked Ahmed.

"Without doubt it is true. A lie has no legs. Did not all the men hear what he said? He would not say what is false in the hearing of them all, for they would put him to shame."

"And what will become of my father?"

"Hai! that Allah knows, Ahmed-ji. Jan Larrens is a stern man, they say, and swift to punish. The Feringhis have many ways of punishing. Sometimes they slay with a rope; sometimes they make a man pay much money; sometimes they hold him prisoner. Who can tell what they will do with the master!"

"And we cannot help him, can we, Ahsan?"

"Ahuh! 'tis impossible. Peshawar is a strong city: once and twice I have been there in my youth—before the Feringhis came. Jan Larrens is the governor now; he has many soldiers, both Feringhis and true believers who take their pay, like Sherdil, son of Assad. It would be like a man beating his head against the rocks to go there and try to release the master by force. And to buy his freedom is alike impossible. In the old days we might have sent presents to the jailer, or to the governor of the prison, or to the governor of the city, and if the presents were rich enough the gates of the prison would open. But that is all changed since the servants of Jan Kumpani came. Strange are the ways of the Feringhis! Their eyes do not shut when one offers to put rupees in their palms; nay, I heard of a young Feringhi at Lahore, who, when Kunwar Khan spoke of giving him a great sum if he would buy Kunwar's mildewed grain for the soldiers—this young Feringhi doubled his fist and smote Kunwar in the face, and he fell backward, showing the soles of his feet. Truly the Feringhis are a strange folk."

"Well then, Ahsan, there is but one thing to do. I shall be chief now, and I will get more and more men about me until we are strong enough to make an attack on the prison and bring my father out. He has broken into their places with a few men and taken their horses; why should not I with a great company break into their prison and bring forth a man?"

Ahsan shook his head.

"You can climb the mulberry-tree, but not the thorny acacia," he said; "that is foolish talk. And you forget Dilasah."

"What of Dilasah?"

"Hai! He will make himself chief now, Ahmed-ji; and listen, let me speak in your ear. Did I not distrust Dilasah? Did I not doubt him when he spoke of the talk of the bazar?"

"What do you mean? Why do you speak in whispers? Tell me, Ahsan."

"Hush! Traitors have long ears." Then, bending forward until his lips almost touched the ears of Ahmed, he said: "Do we know that Dilasah did not make ready this trap for the master?"

Ahmed started. This suspicion had not occurred to him. But remembering Dilasah's long association with Minghal, the man of wiles, and his sudden change of attitude towards his uncle, he saw that Ahsan's suggestion might be well founded. Who stood to gain so much from Rahmut Khan's disappearance as Dilasah? He coveted the chiefship; he had been consumed with anger when Rahmut adopted Ahmed as his heir; nothing was more likely than that he should seize such an opportunity of getting rid of the old chief, and so open the way to his ambition.

"Then it will be a fight between Dilasah and me," said the boy, setting his teeth.

"Hai! That is again foolishness," replied the old man. "What can you do, Ahmed-ji? Dilasah is a grown man, cunning as a leopard. He will speak soft words to the people, and when he tells them 'tis a choice between him and you, and you a Feringhi, think you they will respect the desires of the master when he is far away? Many love you, some are indifferent, some are envious; but when Dilasah has said his say, and made his promises, and got the mullah on his side—as he will do with presents of sheep and tobacco—think you that even those who love you will offend Allah and risk the pains of Gehenna for you? There is talk even now that the Feringhis wish to make us all Christians. Dilasah and the mullah will persuade the folk that you, if you become their chief, will turn them from the true belief. I am an old man, Ahmed-ji, but though I have a white beard and toothless gums I can yet see a cloud in the sky."

Ahmed frowned. He had not foreseen these difficulties. He repeated the Koran and said the prayers the mullah had taught him; in nothing did he fall short of the observances required of good Mohammedans. In the early days of his life in Shagpur, when he went tearfully to bed, he had repeated the little prayers learnt at his mother's knee; but in the long years since then, during which he had heard no word of English spoken around him, these English prayers had slipped from him. It was absurd to suppose that when he became chief he would try to turn the people to a religion of which he knew nothing. He could not but think that Ahsan's fears were groundless, and when next day Dilasah met him with a frank smile, and, after a word of commiseration of the unhappy fate of Rahmut Khan, addressed him with apparent cordiality as the new chief, he ran to tell Ahsan that he was quite mistaken.

There was sorrow in the village at the loss of Rahmut Khan. The people were proud of him, and with shrill cries called down maledictions on the Feringhis. But no one spoke of attempting anything on his behalf; Ahsan's views on that matter were shared by them all. Dilasah led the way in professions of loyalty to Ahmed, much to the wonderment of the old gate-keeper. Ahsan watched him narrowly. He did not believe in his sincerity, and yet could see no object in his feigning a loyalty he did not feel. And it was not until some days had passed that a light flashed upon him. Though Dilasah agreed with the rest of the men that it was impossible to rescue the old chief, he said that it was surely desirable that an attempt should be made to discover his fate. And at that, Assad, the father of Sherdil, offered to make the journey to Peshawar to inquire.

"Who better than I?" he said. "Sherdil, my son, is a great man among the Feringhis; it is a good thing that I, his father, should visit him and see with my own eyes the greatness that has come to him. Without doubt he will be in Peshawar or some place near at hand; it will be easy for me to find him, and he will assuredly know what has become of our master. I will go to Peshawar, and bring back news of the chief, and also, I doubt not, some manifest tokens of the estimation in which my son is held."

This offer he made to Ahmed in the presence of Dilasah, and the latter strongly urged its acceptance. Accordingly, two days after the return of the luckless expedition, Assad set off disguised as a mendicant, to escape all danger of being snapped up by a hostile tribe if he went otherwise. And shrewd old Ahsan now saw through the conduct of Dilasah. The man would not feel safe until he knew for certain that Rahmut Khan was permanently out of the way. If there was the least chance of the chief's return—whether by escape, or by payment of a fine, for Dilasah was very hazy as to what his punishment would be—it behooved him to go carefully. Shagpur would never side with him against its rightful chief; and if Rahmut should come back and find that he had tried to oust Ahmed, he knew that he could expect no mercy from his kinsman. He was thus biding his time, thought Ahsan, until Rahmut's fate was known with certainty, and then he would show his hand.

"You must be ready for flight when Assad comes back," said the gate-keeper to Ahmed.

"Why should I flee?" asked the boy.

"Because if you do not it will befall you as it befell Sundar Khan. He had a rival in the succession to his father, even as you have, and Gulam, the rival, offered to put the matter before a council of the clansmen and abide by their choice. The choice fell upon Sundar Khan, whereupon Gulam made a great feast to celebrate the happy end of the dispute, to which came Sundar Khan and many of his friends. And when the pipe of peace was passing round after the feast, Gulam slipped away secretly to the door and lighted a match, and even as he himself ran for his life, Sundar Khan and all his friends were blown up into the air. So Gulam made himself chief, and so also will Dilasah if he learns that Rahmut Khan is put out of the way."

This advice was distasteful to Ahmed, and for some days he refused to consider it. Dilasah was still very pleasant; made no assumption of authority; said once, with a mournful shake of the head, that Ahmed would soon be chief in reality, for Rahmut, being old, could not long survive imprisonment. But a day or two after he said something which recalled the story Ahsan had told, and Ahmed for the first time began to think that his life might indeed be in danger.

"'Tis to be feared we shall never see Rahmut Khan again, Ahmed-ji," said Dilasah, "and when Assad returns with the news of what has befallen him, and we have no longer hope, we must put away our sorrow and make a feast to hail thee as chief. Dost thou approve, Ahmed-ji?"

Ahmed looked at the fat, smiling face with the cunning little eyes, and in the light of what Ahsan had said saw villainy there.

"It will be well, Dilasah," he said. "We will have a feast, and Rahmut's women and my sisters shall make us sweetmeats with their own hands. That will be a great day, Dilasah."

And Dilasah smiled and rubbed his hands, and Ahmed went off to tell Ahsan. There was no longer any doubt that Rahmut's nephew meditated mischief, but Ahmed was still disinclined to take flight. He was popular with the younger men, and suggested to Ahsan that they might form a party in opposition to Dilasah and forestall him.

"Hai!" said Ahsan. "Crows home in the nests of hawks. It is vain, Ahmed-ji. I have seen Dilasah many times in converse with the mullah; he is cunning as a fox. Thou wilt be safe only by flight. My counsel to thee is to have thy good horse Ruksh ready, and when Assad returns with the bad news—for my heart tells me it will be bad—ride out that very night."

"And whither should I ride, Ahsan? This is my home. I have nowhere to go."

"Make thyself known to the Feringhis, Ahmed-ji. Maybe thou hast kinsmen among them."

"'Tis folly, Ahsan. Who would believe me? I cannot speak the Feringhi speech, save one or two words that come back to me sometimes. I know nothing of the Feringhis' ways; I do not know the name of my true father. Dost thou remember it, old friend?"

"Nay, I have often sought for it in my mind, but it is gone. Rahmut knows it, and Minghal also, but it is clean gone from me."

"Then how could I prove to the Feringhis that I am one of them? No, I like it not; and furthermore, Rahmut lies in prison, and I begin to believe that it is even as thou sayest—that Dilasah betrayed him. Is it not my duty by some means to bring Rahmut back and deal with Dilasah as he deserves?"

"Hai! foolish talk again. Think of what I say, Ahmed-ji; the time is not long; Assad will soon be back, and then if thou art not gone, Dilasah will seek thy life and take it."

Ahmed was impressed by the warnings of Ahsan, still more when he found that the old gate-keeper's views were shared by Rahmut Khan's family. Since Minghal's raid these ladies, with their children and servants, like Ahmed himself, had remained in the tower, and the chief's usual house had been unoccupied. Dilasah had been given the house in which he had lived before his breach with his uncle years before. On the day after Ahsan had spoken so seriously, when Ahmed paid his usual visit of respect to Rahmut's principal wife, Meriem, the lady strongly urged him not to go about the village alone.

"That evil man Dilasah hates thee," she said. "Gather some of the young men who love Rahmut and thee, Ahmed-ji, and have them always about thee when thou goest into the streets."

Ahmed thought the advice worth taking, but the position irked him. The constraint was unendurable after his customary life of freedom, and he felt that it must be ended one way or another. The obvious way—the natural way to a Pathan—was to meet Dilasah with his own weapons and kill him at the first opportunity. But Dilasah's party was stronger than his own, and supposing his enemy were out of the way, the prejudice against him as one of Feringhi birth would render his position still very insecure. The death of Dilasah would probably result in a feud between his faction and Ahmed's. No one could say how such a strife would end, but certainly it would in no way help towards the restoration of Rahmut Khan to his village, the object Ahmed had most at heart. The boy concluded that he had better leave the village and go to Peshawar, to see whether some means might not be found of freeing the old chief. It was a debt he owed to the man who had saved his life and loved him so well. Ahsan might talk of the difficulties, but Ahsan was an old man; old men often saw difficulties where young men could see none. Ahsan would not have crept to the shed and blown up Minghal's powder; Ahsan would not have taken part in Sherdil's daring stratagem against Minghal's village; yet both of these hazardous enterprises had been successful. Ahsan might talk as he pleased: certainly this was what Ahmed would do.

But Ahsan, when the new plan was put to him, did not speak of the difficulties. He applauded the boy's decision, and even begged him to carry it out at once, without waiting for Assad's return. Ahmed would not consent to this. Assad's news might have some bearing on his future course of action. Besides, before he left the village he wished to know whether their suspicions of Dilasah were well founded. If they were, he would have two aims in life: to bring back Rahmut Khan, and to punish Dilasah.

It was three weeks before Assad returned. He came in one day weary and footsore, and in great depression of spirits.

"Hai! Sherdil was ever a liar," he said dolefully, when amid a circle of the chief men of the village he made his report to Ahmed. "He a great man with the sahibs, forsooth! Why, he is but a servant, and does foolishness. I found him not in Peshawar; weary as I was, I had to go two days' journey to Mardan in the north-east. And what did I see there? Two score of men standing in line beneath the walls, and a Feringhi with a boy's face calling out strange words to them, and as he spoke these men lifted their right feet all together, and held them in the air as a goose does, and then let them fall to the ground again, and up came their left feet, all together, and so they marched, very slowly. And then they stopped, and moved their feet up and down without walking; 'twas the most foolish thing I ever saw. And then at another word from the Feringhi dog they lifted their guns—short guns for babies, not like our jazails—and held them straight before their noses, and at another word they let them down again and crossed their hands over them, and so stood without motion, as quiet and still as if they had been trees. And I called to Sherdil, and bade him come and greet his father; but he neither looked at me nor said a word, not daring to make a movement except at the bidding of the Feringhi boy. And afterwards, when the Feringhi made a hissing between his teeth—'Dissmisss!' was the word of the foolish one—Sherdil came to me and asked me with great violence why I had tried to get him punished, for it seems that if he had walked out of the line, or lifted a hand, or spoken a word save at the bidding of the Feringhi, he would have suffered grievous stripes, or have received no sheep's flesh to eat. Cursed be the dogs of Feringhis! That is what they make of the free-men of the hills."

"But what of my father?" asked Ahmed, to whom this description of European drill was not interesting.

"Thy father? Hai! He is shut up for five years."

He was interrupted by shrill cries from the men around. Ahmed, stealing a glance at Dilasah, saw his eyes flash with satisfaction.

"Yes, for five years he is to lie in the Feringhis' prison. That is the judgment of Jan Larrens. And Sherdil, my wretched son, said that it was his just deserts and the due reward of foolishness. Hai! if I had known what I know now, I would have cut off Sherdil's right hand sooner than let him go back to do goose-step and other things unworthy of a Pathan. And when I told him what I thought, he laughed at me with great laughter, and said, 'Go back, foolish one, or verily I will tell Lumsden Sahib of thee, and ere thou knowest thou wilt be doing goose-step too. Lumsden Sahib will have thee.' And I shook the dust off my feet and departed; and my heart is sore vexed, for I thought my son was a great man, and would do me honour in my old age."

There was much shaking of heads at this exposure of Sherdil's boastfulness, and much sympathy expressed for Assad. But the man was an ignorant fellow, a dyer by trade, who had seldom left the village, and Ahmed felt sure that he had in some way been mistaken.

Assad's news about Rahmut Khan did but confirm his resolution to leave the village. He was on the point of mentioning it to Dilasah when that plausible man himself came to him, all smiles and geniality.

"Salaam, Ahmed," he said. "'Tis to be feared we shall never see our chief Rahmut Khan again. He is an old man; the prison will kill him. No man can strive against fate, and it is not meet that we sorrow overmuch for what cannot be altered. Therefore am I come to bid thee to a feast, Ahmed-ji, at which we will hail thee as chief and be merry."

"But I cannot be chief while my father lives."

"True, but what matters it? Thou wilt be chief in his absence, it is what he himself would wish; and if by Allah's mercy he does not die in the Feringhis' prison, but comes back to us, he will rejoice that we held a feast in thy honour. This feast will be to-morrow, Ahmed-ji, and I have already ordered the finest sheep to be killed."

Ahmed had no reasonable excuse for declining the invitation, and Dilasah went away well pleased.

But later in the day there came to Ahmed an old Hindu scribe who had settled in the village years before. In all considerable Pathan villages there were a few men of Hindu race—low-caste men, who plied petty trades among the Mohammedans in the hope of making money. This man had been protected once by Ahmed against the rabble of the village when he had unwittingly given them offence. He came to the tower as soon as it was dark, and being admitted to Ahmed's room, said—