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'Tooni, he said presently, 'without doubt I must sit down, and down he sat plumply, with his back against the wall, and his two small legs, in their very best striped cotton trousers, stretched out in front of him. As a matter of fact the Maharajah was asleep, and had forgotten all about Sonny Sahib in the hall of audience. It was Moti who reminded him, whispering in his ear until he awoke.
So great was the honour in which I was held! But, to-day when the rain falls and the river rises, I creep into my hut and whimper like a dog. My strength is gone from me. I am an old man and the fire-carriage has made the ford desolate. They were wont to call me the Strong One of the Barhwi. Behold my face, Sahib it is the face of a monkey. And my arm it is the arm of an old woman.
"Not all, my mem-sahib," answered Hanani, in the soothing tone of one who instructs a child. "Hafiz knew the sahib in the days before Hanani came to Kurrumpore. Hafiz told a strange story of the sahib. He had married and had taken his wife to the mountains beyond Srinagar. And there an evil fate had overtaken him, and she the mem-sahib had returned alone." Hanani paused dramatically.
"What are you two men doing?" ran the note. "The very worst has happened. We all need men immediately, and I particularly need them. One hundred troopers now would be better than a thousand men a month from now. Hurry, and send word by bearer. "How soon can you start back?" asked Cunningham. "The minute I am provided with a horse, sahib." Cunningham turned to Alwa.
But Kirby kept his eyes ahead, and the shadows continued to flash by them in a swift procession until Warrington leaned forward, and then Kirby leaned back against the reins. "There he is, sir!" They reined to a halt, and a drenched trooper jumped up behind to kneel on the back seat and speak in whispers. "No sign of him at all?" asked Kirby. "No, sahib.
The Kurds were fighting on foot, taking cover behind boulders, and he was bidding me take my command and find their horses. I found them, sahib, within an ace of being too late. They had left them in a valley bottom with a guard of but twenty or thirty men, who mistook us at first for Kurds, I suppose, for they took no notice of us.
"The sahib won't let you see it, nor ride on it this evening," reply the servants; and, given to understand that we won't put up with their importunities, they worry us no more. "Oh, that I could get rid of them thus readily always!" I mentally exclaim; for I feel instinctively that the farther east I get, the more wretchedly worrying and inquisitive I shall find the people.
But the girl drew back and shook her beautifully-modelled head, the delicate head with the black hair smoothed back to simplicity, and her voice was half sob: "It can't be, Sahib, I am but " She checked; to speak of the decoits even, might lead to talk that would cause the Sahib to go to their camp, and he would be killed; and she would be a witness to testify against her own people, the slayers of the sepoys.
There came Yussuf Dakmar and five men brushing by me, and they all went into a room four doors beyond the sahib's. The room next beyond that one is occupied by an officer sahib, who fought at El-Arish alongside my battalion. Between him and me is a certain understanding based on past happenings in which we both had a hand.
Pulitzer had discovered just what he wanted to know how much I could see in a given time, and how much of it I could remember with a fair degree of accuracy. It was simply the game of the jewels which Lurgan Sahib played with Kim, against a different background but with much the same object. In the foregoing description of Mr.
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