ased at Ahmed's presence in Delhi. Perhaps he
thought that his friend Rajab Ali might have consulted him before
sending a new and untried spy into the city. And if this was indeed his
feeling, how well, thought Ahmed, was it justified? Was this man
omniscient, that nothing could escape him? Ahmed felt thoroughly
disheartened. What could he do? He would only make himself foolish in
the eyes of the sahibs if he sent them old news, even as he had already
made himself foolish in the eyes of Fazl Hak.

"Go on," said the maulavi. "Let me write some new news."

"Of what use, O wise one? It were but waste of breath."

"Yet go on. Who can tell but that the wind may have carried one little
seed to your ear?"

"A man was hanged to-day on a tree before the Kotwali, it being supposed
he was concerned in the making of a mine that was discovered by the
Kashmir gate."

"And a man in the garb of a fakir," said the maulavi, as if in
continuance of the report, "was seized at the Ajmir gate, and it being
suspected that he was a spy, he was killed. Go on."

"Bakht Khan with his force from Bareilly has halted at the tomb of
Safdar Jang."

"That was yesterday. He is now at Ghaziabad. Go on."

"I will even go to my place, and trouble you no more until I have learnt
somewhat that no one else can know. Is it not vain to pour water into a
vessel that is already full?"

And then Fazl Hak laid down his pen and smiled. It was as though he was
satisfied with having impressed Ahmed with a sense of his knowledge and
of his own insignificance.

"Come, let us talk as friends," he said. "You are but a youth in these
things, in spite of your beard." ("He does not know of my disguise,
then," thought Ahmed; this was a little cheering.) "And for one who is
but beginning you have not done amiss. I perceive that you have a quick
eye and a ready ear, and if, when these troubles are over, you care to
enter my service, without doubt you will in due time become the
possessor of many rupees."

"I thank you," said Ahmed, the sting of his humiliation somewhat
mollified; "but when I have found the hakim I shall return to my own
place."

"The hakim! What is this about a hakim?"

The maulavi's evident surprise pleased Ahmed: here was something else
that he did not know.

"I came not only to learn things about the rebels," he said, "but to
discover the whereabouts of an English hakim who is concealed somewhere
in the city--Craddock Sahib; maybe you know