“Colonel sahib, I spoke wise words!”

It seemed to me that Monty looked very keenly at him before he answered.

“Have you had supper, Rustum Khan?  You look to me feverish from overwork and lack of food.”

“What care I for my belly, sahib, if you break my heart?” the Rajput answered.  “Shall I live to see Turks fling thy carcass to the birds?  I have offered my own body in place of thine.  Am I without honor, that my offer is refused?”

Monty answered that in the Rajput tongue, and it sounded like the bass notes of an organ.

“Brother mine, it is not the custom of my race to send substitutes to keep such promises.  That thou knowest, and none has reason to know better.  If thy memories and honor urge thee to come the way I take, is there no room for two of us?”

“Aye, sahib!” said the Rajput huskily.  “I said before, I am thy man.  I come.  I obey!”

“Obey, do you?” Monty laid both hands on the Rajput’s shoulders, struck him knee against knee without warning and pressed him down into a squatting posture.  “Then obey when I order you to sit!”

The Rajput laughed up at him as suddenly sweet-tempered as a child.

“None other could have done that and not fought me for it!” he said simply.  “None other would have had the strength!” he added.

Monty ignored the pleasantry and turned to Maga, so surprising that young woman—­that she gasped.

“Bring him food at once, please!”

“Me?  I?  I bring him food?  I feed that black—­”

“Yes!” snapped Kagig suddenly.  “You, Maga!”

Maga’s and Kagig’s eyes met, and again he had his way with her instantly.  Peter Measel, standing over by the door, looked wistful and sighed noisily.

“Why should you obey him?” he demanded, but Maga ignored him as she passed out, and Fred nudged me again.

“A miracle!” he whispered.  “Did you hear the martyred biped suggest rebellion to her?  He’ll be offering to fight Kagig next!  Guess what is Kagig’s hold over the girl—­can you?”

But a much greater miracle followed.  Rather than disobey Monty again; rather than seem to question his authority, or differ from his judgment in the least, Rustum Khan forebore presently from sending for his own stripling servant and actually accepted food from Maga’s hands.

As a Mahammadan, he made in theory no caste distinctions.  But as a Rajput be had fixed Hindu notions without knowing it, and almost his chief care was lest his food should be defiled by the touch of outcasts, of whom he reckoned gipsies lowest, vilest and least cleansible.  Nevertheless he accepted curds that had been touched by gipsy fingers, and ate greedily, in confirmation of Monty’s diagnosis; and after a few minutes he laid his head on a folded goat-skin in the corner, and fell asleep.

Then Monty sent a servant to his own quarters for some prized possession that he mentioned in a whisper behind his hand.  None of us suspected what it might be until the man returned presently with a quart bottle of Scotch whisky.  Kagig himself got mugs down from a shelf three inches wide, and Monty poured libations.  Kagig, standing with legs apart, drank his share of the strong stuff without waiting; and that brought out the chief surprise of the evening.