Shere Ali laughed and answered, “It is well.”  Then he added shrewdly:  “But it is possible that you may yet at some time meet the man in Calcutta who wrote the letter to me.  If so, tell him what I did with it,” and Shere Ali’s voice became hard and stern.  “Tell him that I tore it up and scattered it in the dust.  And let him send the news to the Mullahs in the Hills.  I know that soft-handed brood with their well-fed bodies and their treacherous mouths.  If only they would let me carry on the road!” he cried passionately, “I would drag them out of the houses where they batten on poor men’s families and set them to work till the palms of their hands were honestly blistered.  Let the Mullahs have a care, Safdar Khan.  I go North to-morrow to Kohara.”

He spoke with a greater vehemence than perhaps he had meant to show.  But he was carried along by his own words, and sought always a stronger epithet than that which he had used.  He was sore and indignant, and he vented his anger on the first object which served him as an opportunity.  Safdar Khan bowed his head in the darkness.  Safe though he might be in Lahore, he was still afraid of the Mullahs, afraid of their curses, and mindful of their power to ruin the venturesome man who dared to stand against them.

“It shall be as your Highness wishes,” he said in a low voice, and he hurried away from Shere Ali’s side.  Abuse of the Mullahs was dangerous—­as dangerous to listen to as to speak.  Who knew but what the very leaves of the neem trees might whisper the words and bear witness against him?  Moreover, it was clear that the Prince of Chiltistan was a Sahib.  Shere Ali rode back to Government House.  He understood clearly why Safdar Khan had so unceremoniously fled; and he was glad.  If the fool of a Commissioner did not know him for what he was, at all events Safdar Khan did.  He was one of the White People.  For who else would dare to speak as he had spoken of the Mullahs?  The Mullahs would hear what he had said.  That was certain.  They would hear it with additions.  They would try to make things unpleasant for him in Chiltistan in consequence.  But Shere Ali was glad.  For their very opposition—­in so loverlike a way did every thought somehow reach out to Violet Oliver—­brought him a little nearer to the lady who held his heart.  He found the Commissioner sealing up his letters in his office.

That unobservant man had just written at length, privately and confidentially, both to the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab at the hill-station and to the Resident at Kohara.  And to both he had written to the one effect: 

“We must expect trouble in Chiltistan.”

He based his conclusions upon the glimpse which he had obtained into the troubled feelings of Shere Ali.  The next morning Shere Ali travelled northwards and forty-eight hours later from the top of the Malakand Pass he saw winding across the Swat valley past Chakdara the road which reached to Kohara and there stopped.