in an office in Kot Ghazi, and strive to become a leading munshi[9] and then a Deputy-Saheb, a babu in very fact, my father was wroth, and said the boy would be a warrior—­yea, though he had to die in his first skirmish and ere his beard were grown.  Then the woman wept and wearied my father until it seemed better to him that she should die and, being at peace, bring peace.  No quiet would he have at Mekran Kot from my mother and his father, the Jam Saheb, while the woman lived, nor would she herself allow him quiet at Kot Ghazi.  And was she not growing old and skinny moreover?  And so he sent my brother to Mekran Kot—­and the woman died, without scandal.  So my brother dwelt thenceforward in Mekran Kot, knowing many things, for he had passed a great imtahan[10] at Bombay and won a sertifcut[11] thereby, whereof the Jam Saheb was very pleased, for the son of the Vizier had also gone to a madresseh and won a sertifcut, and it was time the pride of the Vizier and his son were abated.

[7] School. [8] Mohammedan High School. [9] Clerk. [10] Examination. [11] Certificate.

“Now the son of the Vizier, Mahmud Shahbaz, was Ibrahim—­and a mean mangy pariah cur this Ibrahim Mahmud was, having been educated, and he hated my brother bitterly by reason of the sertifcut and on account of a matter concerning a dancing-girl, one of those beautiful fat Mekranis, and, by reason of his hatred and envy and jealousy, my mother made common cause with him, she also desiring my brother’s death, in that her husband loved this child of another woman, an alien, his first love, better than he loved hers.  But I bore him no ill-will, Huzoor.  I loved him and admired his deeds.

“Many attempts they made, but though my mother was clever and Ibrahim Mahmud and his father the Vizier were unscrupulous, my brother was in the protection of the Prophet.  Moreover he was much away from Mekran Kot, being, like our father, a great traveller and soon irked by whatever place he might be in.  And, one time, he returned home, having been to Germany on secret service (a thing he often did before he became a Sahib) and to France and Africa on a little matter of rifles for Afghanistan and the Border, and spoke to us of that very Somaliland to which this very pultan, the 99th Baluch Light Infantry, went in 1908 (was it?), and how the English were losing prestige there and would have to send troops or receive boondah[12] and the blackened face from him they called the Mad Mullah.  And yet another time he returned from India bringing a Somali boy, a black-faced youth, but a good Mussulman, whom, some time before, he had known and saved from death in Africa, and now had most strangely encountered again.  And this Somali lad—­who was not a hubshi, a Woolly One, not a Sidi[13] slave—­saved my brother’s life in his turn.  I said he was not a slave—­but in a sense he was, for he asked nothing better than