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 b