horse was a
match for him. Dismounting, he led his horse by the bridle and went to
pay his respects to the chief.

Sherdil had left the village nearly eight years before, when he was a
youth of seventeen. He had been the wildest and most unruly boy of the
tribe, always in mischief, showing no respect for his elders--one day he
had called a holy sayad "old scaldhead," and laughed when his father
thrashed him for it. He had been incorrigibly lazy at school: not all
the mullah's thwackings drove into his thick head the scraps from the
Koran which formed the greater part of his lessons, and he was always
very rebellious at having to fast from sunrise to sunset in Ramzan, the
ninth month. But in tent-pegging and racing and sword-play he beat all
boys of his age, and indeed many of the men; and when he insisted on
joining them in their expeditions, which happened at the age of sixteen,
he excelled them all as a highway robber and a horse-thief.

When he was seventeen he ran away, and nothing had since been heard of
him. His mother grieved, for he was her firstborn; but his father,
having three more sons, was not greatly distressed, for the boy had
always been a trouble to him. And now he had come back, grown out of
knowledge, with a fine black beard and the look of a seasoned warrior.

His father, Assad, as in duty bound, made a great feast in honour of the
returned prodigal. He invited a great number of his neighbours, and
regaled them with the flesh of sheep and goats and--this was a great
luxury--fowls, and beautifully light chapatis baked by his wife Fatima
herself, and luscious sweetmeats made of honey and ghi; but the only
drink was water. And having been well fed, Sherdil related the story of
his life since he had left Shagpur--a good riddance, as most of the folk
thought.

It was a stirring tale, of wild doings on the borders, among men who
kept the passes into the hills and lived amid inaccessible rocks, whence
they swept down upon unsuspecting travellers and merchants in the
plains, and even pushed their forays across the frontiers among the
sahib-log. His audience uttered many an exclamation of wonderment and
admiration as he recounted his exploits, and you may be sure he did not
minimize them. The men about him were robbers and brigands and murderers
themselves, but their deeds faded into insignificance beside the bold
and desperate adventures of Sherdil. Ahmed, who was among the company,
listened with all hi