“Were you ever in Mecca?”

“Yes, Huzoor,” and Ahmed’s eyes flashed at the question.

“I met three men from Chiltistan on the Lowari Pass.  They were going down to Kurachi.  I, too, must make the pilgrimage to Mecca.”

He stood watching the flame of the lamp as he spoke, and spoke in a monotonous dull voice, as though what he said were of little importance.  But Ahmed Ismail listened to the words, not the voice, and his joy was great.  It was as though he heard a renegade acknowledge once more the true faith.

“Afterwards, Huzoor,” he said, significantly.  “Afterwards.”  Shere Ali nodded his head.

“Yes, afterwards.  When we have driven the white people down from the hills into the plains.”

“And from the plains into the sea,” cried Ahmed Ismail.  “The angels will fight by our side—­so the Mullahs have said—–­and no man who fights with faith will be hurt.  All will be invulnerable.  It is written, and the Mullahs have read the writing and translated it through Chiltistan.”

“Is that so?” said Shere Ali, and as he put the question there was an irony in his voice which Ahmed Ismail was quick to notice.  But Shere Ali put it yet a second time, after a pause, and this time there was no trace of irony.

“But I will not go alone,” he said, suddenly raising his eyes from the flame of the lamp and looking towards Ahmed Ismail.

Ahmed did not understand.  But also he did not interrupt, and Shere Ali spoke again, with a smile slowly creeping over his face.

“I will not go alone to Mecca.  I will follow the example of Sirdar Khan.”

The saying was still a riddle to Ahmed Ismail.

“Sirdar Khan, your Highness?” he said.  “I do not know him.”

Shere Ali turned his eyes again upon the flame of the lamp, and the smile broadened upon his face, a thing not pleasant to see.  He wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue and told his story.

“Sirdar Khan is dead long since,” he said, “but he was one of the five men of the bodyguard of Nana, who went into the Bibigarh at Cawnpore on July 12 of the year 1857.  Have you heard of that year, Ahmed Ismail, and of the month and of the day?  Do you know what was done that day in the Bibigarh at Cawnpore?”

Ahmed Ismail watched the light grow in Shere Ali’s eyes, and a smile crept into his face, too.

“Huzoor, Huzoor,” he said, in a whisper of delight.  He knew very well what had happened in Cawnpore, though he knew nothing of the month or the day, and cared little in what year it had happened.

“There were 206 women and children, English women, English children, shut up in the Bibigarh.  At five o’clock—­and it is well to remember the hour, Ahmed Ismail—­at five o’clock in the evening the five men of the Nana’s bodyguard went into the Bibigarh and the doors were closed upon them.  It was dark when they came out again and shut the doors behind them, saying that all were dead.  But it was not true.  There was an Englishwoman alive in the Bibigarh, and Sirdar Khan came back in the night and took her away.”