Barclay of the Guides. Herbert Strang

and paddled it across the river. When the rest were across, the Hindu was carried away into the hills, and Dilawur's scribe—for he could not write himself—penned a letter to his sorrowing friends, informing them that their relative was well and happy, and would be restored to them fat and jolly for the little sum of two hundred rupees.

      "Wah! wah!" said the company in chorus. "And what next, O lion of the hills?"

      And Sherdil, whose name means "lion-hearted," chuckled and said—

      "Why, did ye ever know a Hindu who would pay a price without bargaining? And the richer they are, the more they haggle. 'Two hundred rupees? No, no: we cannot afford that. The sickness fell on our goats last winter; we are very poor; our friend is very dear to us, but he will be too dear if we pay that price. We will give a hundred rupees, when we are sure our friend has lost no flesh.' But Dilawur Khan has not the patience of a camel. When he got their foolish answer he sent me with another letter, saying that if the two hundred rupees were not in his hands within seven days, he would strike off their dear relative's head and send it them as an offering of peace; only having been at the expense of feeding him with good fattening food all that time, he would require two thousand rupees as recompense."

      "Wah! wah!" shouted the delighted hearers, to whose sense of justice this appealed no less than to their sense of humour; "and what was the answer?"

      "Why, the answer was two hundred rupees, full tale, and a present of goats beside. And the Hindu—whom fear and the delay of his marriage had most marvellously thinned—was restored to his home, with good wishes for a long life and many sons—for our sons to pluck likewise."

      And in the midst of the laughter this story evoked, one of the guests asked a question—

      "But why, O Sherdil, hast thou given up the dress of thy forefathers—the chogah, and the blue trousers drawn in at the ankles, and the sandals? Why dost thou wear this strange garb, like the dust of the plain or corn of the fields in colour?"

      "Eha, that is a strange story too," said Sherdil, and he drew himself up. "I am a servant of the sahib-log."

      "Hai! hai!" gasped the company in astonishment. "A servant of the sahib-log! the accursed Feringhis! sayest thou, O Sherdil?"

      "'Tis true. My coat is the colour of corn, say you? yes, but it is the colour of the lion also. Is not my name Sherdil? A great sahib, his name Lumsden, heard of me; he knows everything; no man who does brave deeds escapes him. Having heard of my great daring in the hills, he sent one to me who had served him long and was as brave as myself, and begged me, if it were not too much trouble, to go and see him. And then he spoke fairly to me: the sahibs are just and speak true; he told me that he had learnt somewhat of my doings, and asked whether it would suit my honour to join a company of warriors like myself—Afridis and Gurkhas, Sikhs and Hazaras, Waziris and even Kafirs, many bloods but one spirit. And before I made my answer he showed me them at their sports, and verily, brothers, never did I see such skill among so many men. I saw them throw the spear at a mark, and doing nazabaze, which is, to fix a stake of a span length in the ground and take it up on the spear's point when passing at a full gallop; and, for another sport, putting an orange on the top of a bamboo three spans high, and slicing it through with the sword as they ride by at full speed. 'By my beard!' I thought, 'these are fit mates for me;' and I asked the sahib whether I might try the nazabaze myself. And he allowed me, and when I caught up the stake on my spear point he smote his hands together and said words in his tongue to Hodson Sahib that stood by him, and then he offered me good wages to be one of his men—Guides, they call them. And I agreed, and therefore it is, my friends, that I wear this garb, which being of the colour of earth cannot be seen from afar so clearly as our own garments."

      Assad, for the first time in his life proud of this son of his, swelled with gratification.

      "Well did I name thee Sherdil, my son," he said. "But tell us, what dost thou do for the pay these Feringhis—curst unbelievers—give thee? Assuredly it is easy work, or thou wouldst not do it."

      Sherdil laughed.

      "You ask what we do, my father—we of Lumsden Sahib's Guides. We do what we are bid to do—is not that strange? It is strange to me myself, I own; for I never did what you bade me, father. But with the sahibs—well, that is a different matter. They say, Do this! and we do it, with a cheerful countenance. Canst thou see Sherdil handling a pick-axe? Say we have no water, and the sahib wishes a well to be sunk. We of the Guides do it, and I, Sherdil, am the most diligent among them. Say we need bricks to make a wall; the sahib bids us mould the clay and burn it, and lo! the bricks are made. Say the sahib desires to go a-hunting—and a mighty hunter he is, by Allah!—he bids us go into the jungle as beaters, and gives us rounds of ammunition for ourselves. And if we do well in our tasks, he gives us goats and rice, and after the feast we sing songs and make merry."

      "But this is not work fit for warriors of the hills," said Assad, looking a little blank. "Dost never fight and steal?"

      "To steal is forbidden," replied Sherdil; "it is against the sahibs' law. But fight!—do we not fight, my father! Didst never hear how we fought at Multan, with Fatteh Khan? And how we took the fort of Goringhar, Rasul Khan being our leader? Lo! I have many tales to tell; they will last the days of my leave. Yes, we fight, when we get the chance. Why, only four days ago we spied a troop of fifty or more hill-men away there in the hills, and we chased them for two days and nights, but they would never stand to take a shot at us, so much are we feared."

      Inquiry soon discovered that Sherdil had been among the troops which had kept Rahmut Khan on the run, and loud was his laughter when he learnt that it was his own chief whom they had been chasing. He became serious, however, when he heard of what had befallen the village during the chief's absence, and cursed Minghal Khan with the true vigour of a Pathan. And on being told that no plans had yet been formed for the punishment of the offender, he vowed by the beard of the Prophet that some way should be found before his leave was expired.

      Next day he sought an interview with the chief, and had not been in conversation with him more than half-an-hour before Rahmut called his council together and asked their opinion of an enterprise Sherdil had suggested. It won their hearty admiration. One of Minghal's sources of revenue consisted of a tribute levied on traders passing to and from Central Asia. Their route lay within a few miles of his village, and, indeed, sometimes they made use of a change-house in it. They usually travelled in bodies of considerable size, and sufficiently well armed to offer a good defence against marauders. But they found it profitable to placate the principal chiefs through whose territories they passed by paying a tribute varying with the importance of the chiefs; and the chiefs on their side recognized that their interests were better served by the regular income thus derived than by forays which might or might not be successful, and which would ultimately have the effect of scaring away the trade caravans altogether.

      Sherdil had suggested that advantage of this fact might be taken to practise a trick on Minghal. He proposed that a small party of Rahmut's men should be equipped as traders, and thus gain admittance to Minghal's village. Then, at night, they might find some means of seizing his tower, and while the village was in confusion Rahmut could attack it with the main body of his men.

      The old chief himself, true to his character, was at first reluctant to fall in with this cunning scheme. He pointed out that Minghal's attack on his own tower had failed, and foresaw many possibilities of failure in the proposed adventure. He would have preferred to wait until he could have gathered a sufficient reinforcement to enable him to make a direct attack in force on his enemy. But Sherdil laughed away his doubts; the burden of his reasoning was that against a wily enemy like Minghal, wiles must be employed. And as for the matter of the tower, and a possible failure there, that was not worth considering.

      "Minghal had no Sherdil and no Ahmed," he said, with a magnificent gesture. "I, Sherdil, have learnt somewhat from the sahibs, and has not Ahmed the blood of sahibs in his veins? We are more than a match for Minghal, believe me."

      Rahmut frowned, and threw an anxious glance at Ahmed when this reference was made to his English birth. This admiration of the sahibs was little to his liking; but he discreetly said nothing of what was passing in his mind,