ines of men lifting and setting down their feet
like automata at the word of the officers, and gravely balancing
themselves like herons at a pond. He had nothing to learn in "stables"
save some small matters of routine, and in three months passed as a
thoroughly efficient sowar. Furthermore, he was on good terms with his
comrades. Sherdil treated him as a show pupil, and one day took an
opportunity of asking Lumsden Sahib whether his praise of Ahmed had not
been well deserved.

"Do you want us to make him a risaldar at once?" said Lumsden, with a
laugh.

"The heaven-born knows that I, Sherdil, am not yet a naik," said the man
readily. Lumsden owed a great part of his influence with the men to the
freedom he permitted in his intercourse with them. His attitude towards
them was that of one brave man to another; it made for mutual respect;
yet no man forgot that the commander was a hazur or presumed on his
_bonhomie_.

Ahmed was one of the escort that accompanied Lumsden and Sir John
Lawrence to their interview with Dost Muhammed, the Amir of Kabul, at
the entrance to the Khaibar Pass on the first day of the New Year. He
wondered whether Jan Larrens would recognize him, but the great man was
too preoccupied to notice a trooper. When it became known that in
pursuance of the agreement made at that meeting Lumsden was to go before
long on a mission to Kandahar, Ahmed hoped that he would be chosen among
the escort on that occasion. Proximity day after day to the British
officers would provide him with many opportunities of picking up their
language. But before the time came for the mission to start he had
reason to change his mind.

One evening, as he was passing alone through the Pathan lines of the
infantry, he heard through the kusskuss matting which formed the doorway
of one of the huts, and which had been blown aside for a second by a
gust of wind, a voice that sounded strangely familiar. It was not the
voice of any of his comrades, and for a moment he could not remember to
whom it belonged. Not greatly concerned, he was passing on when he
recalled it in a flash; it was certainly very much like the voice of
Minghal, ex-chief of Mandan, and his father's enemy. He paused; if the
speaker was indeed Minghal, what had brought him to Hoti-Mardan? Ahmed
wondered whether the defeated chief had heard of his enlistment in the
Guides, and had come on his own or Dilasah's behalf to do him a
mischief. It occurred to him that he m