e of the blood. But some years
before, when the sahibs came to assist Bahadur Shah--who certainly
needed assistance--in the government of his kingdom, the house had been
purchased by one of them from its impoverished owner. Craddock Sahib was
a hakim, and also, as it appeared, a man of war; in the English way of
putting it, he was a surgeon attached to one of the foot regiments in
the service of the Company. He had a wife, a son, and a daughter; so
large a house was quite unnecessary, as Kaluja thought, for so small a
family, especially when the son went away over the black water to his
own country, to learn how to become a hakim like his father. But that
was a characteristic of the sahibs: they loved spaciousness; and if
Craddock Sahib's family was small, his household was correspondingly
large; Kaluja Dass as khansaman ruled over quite a regiment of
underlings.

Dr. Craddock had been in cantonments when the rising took place. As soon
as news of it reached his ears he mounted his buggy and hastened back
into the city, against the advice of all his friends. At the gate he was
met by a sepoy, who presented a loaded pistol at his head; but quick as
thought the doctor lashed him across the face with his whip, and the man
slunk howling away. Seeing that the street was full of people, Dr.
Craddock jumped from his buggy and made his way by side streets towards
his house. He had almost reached it when he was set upon by a group of
ruffians, who hacked at him with their knives and left him for dead on
the ground.

It happened that next day the doctor's house was granted by the king to
a Pathan adventurer named Minghal Khan, who had just entered the city.
He had come with high recommendations from the Maulavi Ahmed Ullah. Had
he not earned Paradise by going to and fro through the land in the guise
of a fakir and preparing the minds of the faithful for the great
deliverance at hand? So worthy a missionary deserved well at the hands
of Bahadur Shah, and the doddering old king at once made him a subahdar
and gave him for residence the house which had just been purged of the
defiling presence of an infidel Feringhi.

The first thing Minghal Khan did was to fling out of the house some of
the European furniture, treading under heel the many dainty nick-nacks
which had stood for so much to the memsahib as mementoes of home. Among
the larger articles of furniture which he allowed to remain was a lofty
almirah, on the shelves of which