e would you be, outlaws, vagrants
that you are, hated of God and man, but for our help? Your bodies would
have rotted long ago on the hills. The kites would be feeding on your
sons; your women would be in the Bokhara market. We have saved you a
dozen times from the vengeance of the English. When they wished to come
up and burn you out, we have put them past the project with smooth
words. We have fed you in famine, we have killed your enemies, we have
given you life. You are freemen indeed in the face of the world, but
you are our servants."

Fazir Khan made a gesture of impatience. "That is as God may direct
it," he said. "Who are ye but a people of yesterday, while the
Bada-Mawidi is as old as the rocks. The English were here before you,
and we before the English. It is right that youth should reverence
age."

"That is one proverb," said the man, "but there are others, and in
especial one to the effect that the man without a sword should bow
before his brother who has one. In this game we are the people with the
sword, my friends."

The hillman shrugged his shoulders. His men looked on darkly, as if
little in love with the stranger's manner of speech.

"It is ill working in the dark," he said at length. "Ye speak of this
attack and the aid you expect from us, but we have heard this talk
before. One of your people came down with some followers in my father's
time, and his words were the same, but lo! nothing has yet happened."

"Since your father's time things have changed, my brother. Then the
English were very much on the watch, now they sleep. Then there were no
roads, or very bad ones, and before an army could reach the plains the
whole empire would have been wakened. Now, for their own undoing, they
have made roads up to the very foot of yon mountains, and there is a new
railway down the Indus through Kohistan waiting to carry us into the
heart of the Punjab. They seek out inventions for others to enjoy, as
the Koran says, and in this case we are to be the enjoyers."

"But what if ye fail?" said the chief. "Ye will be penned up in that
Hunza valley like sheep, and I, Fazir Khan, shall be unable to unlock
the door of that sheepfold."

"We shall not fail. This is no war of rock-pigeons, my brothers. Our
agents are in every town and village from Bardur to Lahore. The
frontier tribes, you among the rest, are rising in our favour. There is
nothing to stop us but isolated garrisons of Gurkhas and Pathans, with a