w. Have him up, general."

Ahmed, in company with Sherdil, was eating a mess of rice stewed in a
soup of sheep's tail, when a naik of the corps came up and said that the
general wished to see him.

"Hai!" said Sherdil, with a sigh. "Now it is coming, Ahmed-ji. Verily
thou wilt be a dafadar, or maybe a jamadar, before Sherdil, son of
Assad. What must be will be."

Ahmed wondered what the summons to the general's presence could mean. He
had had a part in the brushes with the enemy, which had been of daily
occurrence since the corps arrived; but he had done nothing to signalize
himself. Hodson gave him a quick look as he came up and saluted.

"Your name?" he said in the Pashtu tongue.

"Ahmed, son of Rahmut Khan of Shagpur, sahib," said the boy.

"A good specimen of the breed," said Hodson to the others. "The general
wants you to go into the city," he added, speaking again in Ahmed's own
language. There was no officer in India more expert than Hodson in the
speech of the natives.

"I am ready, sahib," said Ahmed at once.

"You'll have to pretend to be a mutineer, you know."

"With the hazur's pardon I will not do that. There is no need."

"Then how will you go? The khaki would betray you."

"I would go, sahib, as I went with Sherdil, son of Assad, to Mandan, the
village of Minghal Khan."

"Ah! and how was that?"

Ahmed told how the company of Afghan traders had entered the village,
and about the box containing porcelain from Delhi. He related the story
simply, without any of the boastful garniture which comes so readily to
an oriental's lips. The officers listened with interest, Hodson keeping
his keen blue eyes fixed on the boy's face.

"This is the oddest Pathan I ever came across," he said in English when
Ahmed had finished the story. To Ahmed he said, "Then you will go as an
Afghan trader? How will you do that? Traders do not go alone."

"If I might have Sherdil, son of Assad, and Rasul Khan, and Dilawur----"

"No, no, that won't do.--He wants half your corps, Daly.--You must go
alone."

"As the hazur pleases." He paused, and thought for a minute, the
officers watching him. "I will go alone, sahib," he said. "The tale will
be that I was one of many, travelling towards Delhi with Persian shawls
for the princes' women. And we were set upon by a band of Gujars, and I
alone escaped."

"But if you go alone the Gujars may catch you, for of course you cannot
go to the city from the Ridge; you must approa