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His brothers were followers of Suji-ul-mulk, the little boy whom Surgeon-Major Robertson, as he then was, had made Mehter, and who was besieged in Chitral with our troops. The opposition party, represented by Mahomed Issar, Sher Afzul's foster-brother, had therefore, on capturing this man, put him in quod at Killa Drasan.
Little Suji-ul-mulk, the Mehter elect, was present at the review with his following, and personally conducted by the B.A., resplendent in political uniform, we soldiers being in khaki. The parade was dismissed, and, headed by the pipes of the general's escort and of the 4th Gurkhas, we marched back to our camp.
Back of all are Dhobee, the washerman, and Dirzce, the tailor, and Mehter, the sweeper, and Mussalehee, the torch-boy, and Metranee, the scullion, and all the rest of the household riff-raffry. There is much clapping of hands, and happy wah-wah-ing, wherefrom you conclude that Hastings Clive's birth-day is at least one good result of his being born at all.
Whether the mehter made love to Janki, Mrs. Bronckhorst's ayah, is a question which concerns Strickland exclusively. He came back at the end of three weeks, and said quietly: "You spoke the truth, Biel. The whole business is put up from beginning to end. Jove! It almost astonishes ME! That Bronckhorst-beast isn't fit to live."
Then 'Dandy, 'Curly, 'Brandy, and 'Nettle, till spying a cat in the distance, the whole pack with a whimper of excitement dash off at a mad scramble, the hound straining meanwhile at the slip, till he almost pulls the mehter off his legs. Off goes the cat, round the corner of a hut with her tail puffed up to fully three times its normal size.
"Now lend me fifty rupees," said Strickland, "and give me your Words of Honor that you won't tell my Wife." He got all that he asked for, and left the house while the table drank his health. What he did only he himself knows. A faquir hung about Bronckhorst's compound for twelve days. Then a mehter appeared, and when Biel heard of HIM, he said that Strickland was an angel full-fledged.
The mehter or dog-keeper is also in attendance with a couple of greyhounds in leash, and a motley pack of wicked little terriers frisking and frolicking behind him. This mongrel collection is known as 'the Bobbery Pack, and forms a certain adjunct to every assistant's bungalow in the district.
I spent Christmas in Gilgit, and started on the 2nd January 1895 for Hunza, where I expected to remain for the rest of the winter. News of the murder of Nizam-ul-mulk, Mehter of Chitral, reached Gilgit on the 7th January, and Dr. Robertson, Political Agent at Gilgit, at once made preparations for a visit to Chitral.
A different man, however, called an aubdar, takes care that proper drinking water is supplied we generally used rain water, which was collected in large sheets stretched out between four poles in the rainy season, and drained into earthen jars, where it keeps cool and sweet. "None of those I have mentioned would clean the rooms, and, therefore, another man a mehter or sweeper was employed.
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