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This formed an excellent halting-place, as the men were billeted in the houses, each giving the other mutual protection. We formed our mess in part of the rooms of the headman's house, one Russool of Khusht; he was foster-father to the late Nizam-ul-mulk, but had acknowledged the opposition and joined Sher Afzul.
The light came from a dim lamp in the middle of the room, round which they could discern the sleeping forms of several men five or six, perhaps, but their mufflings made it difficult to distinguish them clearly. One rather removed from the rest, and lying on a charpoy instead of the floor, was evidently Sher Singh himself.
Umra Khan, however, who had in the meantime taken Kila Drosh, retorted by calling upon Dr Robertson to retire, and to recognise Sher Afzul as Mehtar. This, of course, the British resident refused to do; and called a durbar, at which Soojah-ul-Moolk was declared Mehtar of Chitral, on 1st of March.
"I'm jolly glad you don't feel yourself pledged to return." "Sort of nineteenth-century Regulus? Well, that'll depend upon my orders, of course, and I don't take 'em from Sher Singh. Not that we have had any rupture. I told him quite politely that I could hold no further communication with him until the Rani was safe at Ranjitgarh, and that we start to-morrow morning." "Quite so.
The heat of the day was by no means over, though it was late in the afternoon, and actual bodily discomfort almost blotted out thought as Gerrard rode on through the dust, the landscape ahead one blinding glare of trembling, moving lines. He was on the sunny side of the elephant, and on the other Sher Singh seemed to find shade enough to stimulate his inventive faculties.
The procession wound gallantly through the narrow streets to Sher Singh's house, but before the door was reached, the officials who had been sent forward to announce to the Prince the honour that his sovereign intended to confer upon him came back with long faces. Sher Singh was not at home.
"Who should it be but the eldest son of our lord, sahib?" was the answer, and as the old men spoke, Sher Singh flung himself from his reeking horse at the door of the tent and entered. "Where is my lord and father?" he cried. "Bring me to him, that I may embrace his feet, and receive the forgiveness and the favour he has graciously promised me."
The Residency, in which Gerrard had passed so many lonely days, was badly knocked about, and strewn with the dishonoured remnants of Nisbet and Cowper's belongings. Evidently Sher Singh and his adherents had wreaked their vengeance even upon the house where the murdered men had lived, for the place was little more than a ruin.
In January of the following year Lord Gough determined to attack the force of Sher Singh, then posted in his front at the village of Chilianwala, before he could be joined by his son, Sirdar Chuttur Singh.
But they say that the man Sher Singh desires to dissuade your honour from going to Agpur, and that he has given you much abuse." "Evil heart, evil tongue, Sirdar-ji. Yet I go to Agpur, though I would have bidden you and the troop return to Darwan, had I not known that this would be to insult you." The Granthi made a horrified gesture of aversion. "Black indeed would our faces be!" he said.
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