father, on
whom be Peace, brought her to Mekran Kot. 'Tis but desert and mountain,
Sahib, with a few big _jagirs_[2] and some villages, a good fort, a
crumbling tower, and a town on the Caravan Road--but the Jam Saheb's
words are clearly heard and for many miles.

[1] Wine.
[2] Estates.

"Our father, however, was not so foolish as to bring the woman to his
home, for he knew that Pathan horse-dealers, camel-men, and traders
would have taken the truth, and more than the truth, concerning the
woman's social position to the gossips of Mekran Kot. And, apart from
the fact that her father was a drunkard, landless, a jail-bird,
out-casted by his caste-fellows, no father loves to see his son marry
with a woman of another community, nor with any woman but her with whose
father he has made his arrangements.

"So my father, bringing the fair woman, his wife, by ship to Karachi,
travelled by the _relwey terain_ to Kot Ghazi and left her there in
India, where she would be safe. There he left her with her _butcha_,[3]
my half-brother, and journeyed toward the setting sun to look upon the
face of his father the Jam Saheb. And the Jam Saheb long turned his face
from him and would not look upon him nor give him his blessing--and only
relented when my father took to himself another wife, my mother, the
lady of noble birth whom the Jam Saheb had desired for him--and
sojourned for a season at Mekran Kot. But after I was born of this union
(I am of pure and noble descent) his heart wearied, being with the fair
woman at Kot Ghazi, for whom he yearned, and with her son, his own son,
yet so white of skin, so blue of eye, the fairest child who ever had a
Pathan father. Yea, my brother was even fairer than I, who, as the
Huzoor knoweth, have grey eyes, and hair and beard that are not darkly
brown.

[3] Baby.

"So my father began to make journeys to Kot Ghazi to visit the woman his
first wife, and the boy his first-born. And she, who loved him much, and
whom he loved, prevailed upon him to name my brother after _her_ father
as well as after himself, the child's father (as is our custom) and so
my brother was rightly called Mir Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan Ilderim Dost
Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan."

"And what part of that is the name of his mother's father?" I asked, for
the Subedar-Major's rapid utterance of the name conveyed nothing of
familiar English or Scottish names to my mind.

"Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan," replied Mir Daoud Khan;