[1] Wine.
  [2] Estates.

“Our father, however, was not so foolish as to bring the woman to his home, for he knew that Pathan horse-dealers, camel-men, and traders would have taken the truth, and more than the truth, concerning the woman’s social position to the gossips of Mekran Kot.  And, apart from the fact that her father was a drunkard, landless, a jail-bird, out-casted by his caste-fellows, no father loves to see his son marry with a woman of another community, nor with any woman but her with whose father he has made his arrangements.

“So my father, bringing the fair woman, his wife, by ship to Karachi, travelled by the relwey terain to Kot Ghazi and left her there in India, where she would be safe.  There he left her with her butcha,[3] my half-brother, and journeyed toward the setting sun to look upon the face of his father the Jam Saheb.  And the Jam Saheb long turned his face from him and would not look upon him nor give him his blessing—­and only relented when my father took to himself another wife, my mother, the lady of noble birth whom the Jam Saheb had desired for him—­and sojourned for a season at Mekran Kot.  But after I was born of this union (I am of pure and noble descent) his heart wearied, being with the fair woman at Kot Ghazi, for whom he yearned, and with her son, his own son, yet so white of skin, so blue of eye, the fairest child who ever had a Pathan father.  Yea, my brother was even fairer than I, who, as the Huzoor knoweth, have grey eyes, and hair and beard that are not darkly brown.

  [3] Baby.

“So my father began to make journeys to Kot Ghazi to visit the woman his first wife, and the boy his first-born.  And she, who loved him much, and whom he loved, prevailed upon him to name my brother after her father as well as after himself, the child’s father (as is our custom) and so my brother was rightly called Mir Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan.”

“And what part of that is the name of his mother’s father?” I asked, for the Subedar-Major’s rapid utterance of the name conveyed nothing of familiar English or Scottish names to my mind.

“Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan,” replied Mir Daoud Khan; “that was her father’s name, Sahib.”

“Say it again, slowly.”

“Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan.”

“I have it!  Yes, but what?—­John Robin Ross-Ellison?  Good God!  But I knew a John Robin Ross-Ellison when I was a Captain.  He was Colonel of the Corps of which I was Adjutant, in fact—­the Gungapur Volunteer Rifles....  By Jove!  That explains a lot. John Robin Ross-Ellison!”

I was too incredulous to be astounded.  It could not be.

“Han[4] Sahib, be shak![5] Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan was his name.  And his mother called him Jan Rah-bin-Ras el-Isan and his father, Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan, called him Ilderim Dost Mahommed.”