the fourth day, and now they were on a good trunk road that ran to
Indore, and branching to the left, that crossed the Nerbudda River at
Mandhatta, they were constantly passing pilgrims on their way to the
Temple of Omkar. In the affrighted eyes of the Hindus Barlow could
read their dread of the Pindaris; they would cringe at the roadside and
salaam, as fearful were they as if a wolf-pack swept down the highway.

The jamadar would laugh in his deep throat, and twist his black
moustache with forefinger and thumb, and call the curse of Mahomet upon
these worshippers of stone images and foul gods. He loved to ride
stirrup to stirrup with the Englishman, and Barlow found delight in the
man's broad conception of life; the petty things seemed to have no
resting place in his mind, unless perhaps as a matter for ridicule.
The sweep of a country with free rein and a sharp sword, and always the
hazard of loot or death was an engrossing subject. Even the enemy who
fought and bled and died, were like themselves--by Allah! men; but the
merchants, the shop-keepers, and the money-lenders, who cringed and
paid tribute when the Pindaris drove at them in a raid, were pigs,
cowardly dogs who robbed the poor and gave only to the accursed
Brahmins and their foul gods. He would dwell lovingly upon the feats
of courage of the Rajputs, lamenting that such fine men should be
excluded from heaven, dying as they did such glorious deaths, sword in
hand, because of their mistaken infidelity; they were souls lost
because of being led away from a true god, the one god, Allah, through
false priests.

"Mark thou, Sahib," Jemla said once, "I do not hold that it is a merit
in the sight of Allah to slay such except there is need, but when it is
a _jihad_, a question of the supremacy of a true god, Allah, or the
Sahib's God--which no doubt is one and the same--as against the evil
gods of destruction and depravity such as Shiva and Kali, then it is a
merit to slay the children of evil. Mahomet did much to put this
matter right," he declared; "he made good Musselmen of thousands who
would otherwise have been cast into _jehannum_ (hell), at times holding
the sword over their heads as argument. Therein Mahomet was a true
prophet, a saver of souls rather than a destroyer of such."

By noon they were drawing toward Mandhatta, and when they came to where
the road from Indore to Mandhatta joined the one they were travelling,
there was an increase in the st