Thus news that the little party had escaped death soon filtered from mouth to mouth, till it reached the Captain of the Escort, and ere long Foster-father found himself and those in his care once more semi-prisoners on their way to cruel brother Kumran; all the more cruel, doubtless, because King Humayon had already begun the siege of Kandahar, believing his little son to be still within its walls.

Now Kumran was a far cleverer fellow than his brother Askurry; but there was in him a love of deceit for deceit’s sake, which spoiled all his cleverness, for it made him uncertain what he would do in the end.  This indeed is always the case with deceitful people.  They know that what they say and do is not straightforward and true, and so they are like sailors without a compass.  They have no fixed pole by which to steer.

And, in addition, Kumran liked to be considered clever; so he was always outwardly very courteous, very polite, very charming; but what he was within none could say for long.

Thus Foster-father’s heart sank within him, when in the distance, down the rocky ravine through which the Kabul River dashes, and along which the caravan road took its high-perched way, he saw the battlemented wall of the city, cresting the low hills on which the town was built.  It was a fully fortified town through which the river ran, and at its extreme end, commanding the wider plain below, stood the citadel called the Bala Hissar or High Fort.  To reach this the travellers had to cross the iron bridge and wend their way through the narrow bazaars.

Such wonderful bazaars as they were, too!  Crowded with tiny dark arched shops, like caverns, full to the brim with Persian silk carpets, furs from the north, turquoises and all kinds of precious stones from out-of-the-way places with unpronounceable names.  And there were such a quantity of cats!  Grey Persian cats and white ones, and tabbies and black cats who sat on the balconies and stared at Down as she lay on Horse-chestnut’s broad, wavy back.  For the Captain of the Escort had found out what an excellent creature the old pony was, and had brought it along with him.

The High Fort was a huge place with great gardens within its battlements and several separate palaces.  Here, to Foster-father’s unbounded delight, they found that Prince Kumran was himself away, having gone out with a small body of men to the Kandahar frontier, where King Humayon’s arrival had aroused loyalty.  But what was still more cheering was the news that he had left orders for the Heir-to-Empire and his sister to be handed over on arrival to the charge of Dearest-Lady!  Foster-father could hardly believe his ears; for Dearest-Lady (as she was always called by all her family, by all her nephews and nieces, by all her grand nephews and nieces, and cousins, and every one who was lucky enough to belong to her) was simply—­Well! what was she not?  Wise, and gentle, and good, and clever—­all this and more.  She was the sort of Dearest-Lady who lived so long in the hearts of those who knew her, that, years after she was dead they would say, if there was any difficult point to be settled—­“We wonder what Dearest-Lady would have said?”