e
city.

Threading his way through its tortuous lanes, alleys, slums and bazaars
he reached a low door in the high wall that surrounded an almost
windowless house, knocked in a particular manner, parleyed, and was
admitted.

The moment he was inside, the custodian of the door slammed, locked and
bolted it, and then raised an outcry.

"Come," he shouted in Pushtoo. "The Spy! The Feringhi! The
Pushtoo-knowing English dog, that Abdulali Habbibullah," and he drew his
Khyber knife and circled round Ross-Ellison.

A clatter of heavy boots, the opening of wooden "windows" that looked
inward on to the high-walled courtyard, and in a minute a throng of
Pathans and other Mussulmans entered the compound from the house--some
obviously aroused from heavy slumber.

"It is he," cried one, a squat, broad-shouldered fellow, as they stood
at gaze, and long knives flashed.

"Oho, Spy! Aha, Dog! For what hast thou come?" asked one burly fellow as
he advanced warily upon the intruder, who backed slowly to the angle of
the high walls.

"To die, Hidayetullah. To die, Nazir Ali Khan. To die slaying! Come on!"
was the reply, and in one moment the speaker's Khyber knife flashed from
his loose sleeve into the throat of the nearest foe.

As he withdrew it, the door-keeper slashed at his abdomen, missed by a
hair's-breadth, raised his arm to save his neck from a slash, and was
stabbed to the heart, the knife held dagger-wise. Another Pathan rushing
forward, with uplifted knife held as a sword, was met by a sudden low
fencing-lunge and fell with a hideous wound, and then, whirling his
weapon like a claymore in an invisibly rapid Maltese cross of flashing
steel, the man who had been Ross-Ellison drove his enemies before him,
whirled about, and established himself in the opposite corner, and spat
pungent Border taunts at the infuriated crowd.

"Come on, you village curs, you landless cripples, you wifeless sons of
burnt fathers! Come on! Strike for the credit of your noseless mothers!
Run not from me as your wives ran from you--to better men! Come on, you
sweepers, you swine-herds, you down-country street-scrapers!" and they
came on to heart's content, steel clashed on steel and thudded on flesh
and bone.

"Get a rifle," cried one, lying bleeding on the ground, striving to rise
while he held his right shoulder to his neck with his partly severed
left hand. As he fainted the shoulder gaped horribly.

"Get a cannon," mocked Ross-Ellison.