[37] Kos = two miles.

“And behold, his eyes and face were unmarked and uninjured, and the liquid that dripped upon his clothing made no mark and did no hurt.

“‘Blind,’ he shrieked,’ I am blind! O Merciful Allah, my eyes!’ and he fell, howling.

“‘Now that is very strange,’ said my brother, ’for I threw pure, plain, cold water in his face.  See me drink of the remainder!’ and he drank from the bottle, and so did I, in fear and wonder.  Cold, pure, fair water it was, and nothing else!

“But Ibrahim the Weeper was blind.  Stone blind to his dying day and never looked upon the sun again.  Little drops of water had struck him blind.  Nay, the Hand of Allah had struck him blind—­him who had cried:  ’May Allah strike me blind if I do not unto thee a thing of which children yet unborn shall speak with awe”.  He had tried to do such a thing and God had struck him blind—­though my brother, who was very learned, spoke of self-suggestion, and of imagination being sometimes strong enough to make the imagined come to pass. (He told of a man who died for no reason, on a certain day at a certain hour, because his father had done so and he believed that he would also.  But more likely it was witchcraft and he was under a curse.)

“Howbeit, little drops of pure water blinded Ibrahim the Weeper.  And there the foreign blood of my poor brother showed forth.  He could not escape the taint and was weak.  At the last moment he had wavered and, like a fool, had forgiven his enemy.”

“Was he a Christian?” I asked (and had often wondered in the past).

“Nahin, Sahib!  He was a Mussulman, my father having had him taught with special care by a holy moulvie,[38] by reason of the fact that his mother had had him sprinkled with holy water by her priests and had taught him the tenets of the Christian faith—­doubtless a high and noble one since your honour is of it.”

  [38] Priest.

“He had been taught the Christian doctrines, then?”

“Without doubt, Sahib.  Throughout his childhood; in the absence of his father.  And doubtless this aided his foreign blood in making him act thus foolishly.”

“Doubtless,” I agreed, with a smile.

“Yea, at the last moment he had put his vengeance from him and behaved like a weak fool, throwing away the acid, cleaning the bottle and filling it with pure water.  He had intended to give Ibrahim a fright (and also the opprobrious title of the Weeper), to teach him a lesson and to let him go—­provided he swore on the Q’ran never to return to Mekran Kot when he left for England....  Such a man was my poor brother.  But the hand of Allah intervened and Ibrahim the Weeper lived and died stone blind....  A strange man that poor brother of mine, strong save when his foreign blood and foreign religion arose like poison within him and made him weak....  There was the case of the English Sergeant Larnce-Ishmeet whom he spared and sent into the English lines in the little Border War.”