So Yusuf went off for the gun, and Abdul Mujid turned his face towards Mecca, and said the evening prayer.  Then hope came to him from above and he said to the headman:  “Be not hasty; I am a follower of the Prophet as also are ye.  Give me till the morning that I may make my peace with Allah.”

“It is well said,” interposed a bystander; “he is alone and has no chance of escape.  Let us therefore not kill him like a dog or an infidel; but let him make his peace with Allah, and then in the morning he shall die.”

And so it was settled, and Abdul Mujid was bound hand and foot, and laid upon a charpoy[23]; and beside him, with a drawn sword at his side, lay down the man who was to guard him, the two on the same bed.

  [23] Charpoy, the common bed of the country.

All night long Abdul Mujid lay racking his brains for a means of escape, and found none; and then just before dawn came Allah to his help.  Nudging his bedfellow hard, the sepoy said:  “Awake, sluggard, I wish to go and pray.”

“Well, go and pray,” grumbled the guard.

“Go and pray!” replied Abdul Mujid; “how can I go and pray with my arms and feet tied?  Can I make the salutations and genuflections ordered in the Koran while thus strapped up?”

“No, I suppose you can’t,” answered the guard.  “But you also don’t suppose I am going to leave my warm quilt on this bitterly cold morning to guard you while you pray?”

“That is not the least necessary,” said Abdul Mujid; “if you will free one hand I will spread my own carpet by the bed, and you can thus guard me without getting up, for my legs are tied, and therefore I cannot escape.  Assuredly Allah hath spread the cloak of stupidity and sloth over this fellow,” he said to himself, as his janitor rolled over, and lazily muttering “Oh very well, anything for a little peace,” to the sepoy’s intense delight fumblingly untied one of his hands.

What followed was like a streak of lightning from heaven.  In one flash Abdul Mujid had seized the naked sword, and the slothful sentry, before he could draw another breath, lay dead to all below; in another flash he had severed his bonds, and was making the best of his way across the fields.  Nor did he halt, night or day, till weary and exhausted he fell down and slept by the first milestone that proclaimed that he was again in British territory.

Nearly a year afterwards a motley band of ruffians might have been seen walking up the main road at Mardan towards the Court-House.  It was a deputation from a far-away country come to discuss matters with the political officer.  At their head on a sorry steed rode the chief person:  at the roadside by the post-office, idly watching the party file past, was a man of the Guides; and when the eyes of those two, the Guide and the man on the pony, met, they both remembered the village well, and one recollected how nearly it was his last night on earth.