Guides as Sherdil had done. But there were two
difficulties. His friend the swordsmith had said that there were already
many candidates waiting for admission to the corps; it was very unlikely
that room could be made for a new-comer, and one so young. It might be
years before he could be enrolled, and he was loath to wait; the little
money he had would soon be gone, and then the only course open to him
would be to join some band of freebooters in the hills, for to earn his
living by any menial occupation would never have entered his head. That
was a matter of caste.

The second difficulty was also a matter of caste. Sherdil was the son of
a man who, while not of the lowest caste, like the washermen and
sweepers and musicians, was certainly not of a high caste. If all the
Guides were like him, Ahmed felt that he, as the son of a chief, would
demean himself by joining them. His bringing-up made him very sensitive
to caste distinctions. No doubt the Englishmen he had lately left were
of high caste: no doubt his own real father had been one of them; he
must certainly do nothing that would make him lose caste in English
eyes.

These problems occupied his mind as he rode. They dropped from his
thoughts by and by when he came in sight of his destination. He saw,
standing in a clearing amid jungle and scrub, a walled fort, with a
tower on which a flag was flying. Beyond rose the great mountain mass of
the Himalayas. Outside the walls were huts and tents of every sort and
size. As he rode among them up to the gate Ahmed saw men of every border
race in their different costumes; none of them was in khaki, so that
these were apparently not members of Lumsden Sahib's corps. He wondered
whether they were the candidates of whom the swordsmith had spoken, and
his heart sank, for they were strong, stalwart fellows of all ages, none
so young as he, and looked as if they had been men of war from their
youth.

Challenged at the gate, he asked for Sherdil, the son of Assad. And in a
few minutes the man came swaggering to him in his khaki, not a bit like
the downtrodden wretch his father had lamented. He hailed Ahmed
effusively, and invited him proudly into the fort. It was, as Ahmed
found, in the shape of a five-pointed star. Sherdil showed him the
officers' quarters on four of the points, and the magazine and armoury
on the fifth; the rude huts of the infantry tucked away under the
parapets; the hornwork in which the cavalry portion of