ing his turn, and when he was trying Mr. Barclay's
patience inside the tent, Rahmut spent hours with the boy, giving him
rides on his horse, laughing as he strutted by with a wooden sword,
allowing him to fire a shot or two from his pistol. And so, by the time
Minghal's case was decided Rahmut and Jim Barclay--the big, bearded
Pathan warrior of near sixty years, and the English boy of eight--were
fast friends.

Minghal lost his case. The deputy-commissioner decided against him, and
gave judgment that he must quit the lands he had usurped. Minghal left
the tent in a rage, muttering curses on the infidel dog who had
rejected, quietly but firmly, all his pleas, and declaring to Rahmut
that he would one day have his revenge. Rahmut was not a whit more
friendly disposed to the new rulers than was Minghal himself; but he was
a man of few words, and never threatened what he could not at once
perform. Moreover, he had never thought much of his neighbour's case,
and was not surprised at its failure. Minghal found him less sympathetic
than he considered to be his due, and returned to his home in the hills
in a very ill humour.

The opportunity for vengeance came sooner than he could have expected.
In the spring of the next year, when a civil servant named Vans Agnew
and Lieutenant Anderson of the Bombay army were escorting a new diwan or
governor to the city of Multan, they were treacherously attacked, and
their murder was the signal for a general uprising of the Sikh soldiery.
News of the rebellion was carried through the country with wonderful
speed; it came to the ears of Rahmut and Minghal, and, fretting as they
were under the restraints imposed upon them by the proximity of the
British, they resolved at once to make common cause with the revolted
Sikhs. It happened that Mr. Barclay had lately "gone into camp" at a
spot very near the place where he had given his decision against
Minghal. The Pathan chiefs set off with their armed followers, rushed
Mr. Barclay's almost unprotected camp, for he had as yet heard nothing
of the revolt at Multan, and the deputy-commissioner, without a moment's
warning, was shot through the heart. His little son would have suffered
the same fate, so bitter was the tribesmen's enmity against all the
Feringhis, but for Rahmut, who remembered how much he had been attracted
by the boy, and saw an opportunity for which he had yearned--of
providing himself with an heir. One of his wives, now dead, had b