“You have heard the news I suppose,” said Phillips.

“Yes,” replied Poulteney.  He was a wiry dark youth, with a little black moustache and a brisk manner of speech.  “I was out on the hill after chikkor when my shikari saw Shere Ali and his crowd coming down the valley.  He knew all about it and gave me a general idea of the situation.  It seems the whole country’s rising.  I should have been here before, but it seemed advisable to wait until it was dark.  I crawled in between a couple of guard-posts.  There is already a watch kept on the house,” and then he stopped abruptly.  He had caught sight of the Khan in the background.  He had much ado not to whistle in his surprise.  But he refrained and merely bowed.

“It seems to be a complicated situation,” he said to Captain Phillips.  “Does Shere Ali know?” and he glanced towards the Khan.

“Not yet,” replied Phillips grimly.  “But I don’t think it will be long before he does.”

“And then there will be ructions,” Poulteney remarked softly.  “Yes, there will be ructions of a highly-coloured and interesting description.”

“We must do what we can,” said Phillips with a shrug of his shoulders.  “It isn’t much, of course,” and for the next two hours the twenty-five Sikhs were kept busy.  The doors were barricaded, the shutters closed upon the windows and loopholed, and provisions were brought in from the outhouses.

“It is lucky we had sense enough to lay in a store of food,” said Phillips.

The Sikhs were divided into watches and given their appointed places.  Cartridges were doled out to them, and the rest of the ammunition was placed in a stone cellar.

“That’s all that we can do,” said Phillips.  “So we may as well dine.”

They dined with the Khan, speaking little and with ears on the alert, in a room at the back of the house.  At any moment the summons might come to surrender the Khan.  They waited for a blow upon the door, the sound of the firing of a rifle or a loud voice calling upon them from the darkness.  But all they heard was the interminable babble of the Khan, as he sat at the table shivering with fear and unable to eat a morsel of his food.

“You won’t give me up!...  I have been a good friend to the English....  All my life I have been a good friend to the English.”

“We will do what we can,” said Phillips, and he rose from the table and went up on to the roof.  He lay down behind the low parapet and looked over towards the town.  The house was a poor place to defend.  At the back beyond the orchard the hill-side rose and commanded the roof.  On the east of the house a stream ran by to the great river in the centre of the valley.  But the bank of the stream was a steep slippery bank of clay, and less than a hundred yards down a small water-mill on the opposite side overlooked it.  The Chiltis had only to station a few riflemen in the water-mill and not a man would