few overworked English officers at their head. In a week we shall
command the north of India, and if we hold the north, in another week we
shall hold Calcutta and Bombay."

The chief nodded his head. Such far-off schemes pleased his fancy, but
only remotely touched his interest. Calcutta was beyond his ken, but he
knew Bardur and Gilgit.

"I have little love for the race," he said. "They hanged two of my
servants who ventured too near the rifle-room, and they shot my son in
the back when we raided the Chitralis. If ye and your friends cross the
border I will be with you. But meantime, till that day, what is my
duty?"

"To wait in patience, and above all things to let the garrisons alone.
If we stir up the hive in the valleys they may come and see things too
soon for our success. We must win by secrecy and surprise. All is lost
if we cannot reach the railway before the Punjab is stirring."

The mullah had ceased muttering to himself. He scrambled to his feet,
shaking down his rags over his knees, a lean, crazy apparition of a man
with deep-set, smouldering eyes.

"I will speak," he cried. "Ye listen to the man's words and ye are
silent, believing all things. Ye are silent, my children, because ye
know not. But I am old and I have seen many things, and these are my
words. Ye speak of pushing out the English from the land. Allah knows
I love not the breed! I spit upon it, I thirst for the heart of every
man, woman, and child, that I might burn them in the sight of all of
you. But I have heard this talk before. When I was a young priest at
Kufaz, there was word of this pushing out of the foreigner, and I
rejoiced, being unwise. Then there was much fighting, and at the end
more English came up the valleys and, before we knew, we were paying
tribute. Since then many of our people have gone down from the
mountains with the same thought, and they have never returned. Only the
English and the troops have crept nearer. Now this stranger talks of
his Tsar and how an army will come through the passes, and foreigner
will fight with foreigner. This talk, too, I have heard. Once there
came a man with a red beard who spoke thus, and he went down to Bardur,
and lo! our men told me that they saw him hanged there for a warning.
Let foreigner war on foreigner if they please, but what have we to do in
the quarrel, my children? Ye owe nothing to either."

The stranger regarded the speaker with calm eyes of amusement.

"Nothing," sai