’He a Sahib!  He’s a kala admi—­a black man—­unfit to run at the tail of a potter’s donkey.  All the peoples of the earth have harried Bengal.  It is written.  Thou knowest when we of the North wanted women or plunder whither went we?  To Bengal—­where else?  What child’s talk is this of Sahibdom—­after Orde Sahib too!  Of a truth the Blind Mullah was right.’

‘What of him?’ asked Tallantire uneasily.  He mistrusted that old man with his dead eyes and his deadly tongue.

’Nay, now, because of the oath that I sware to Orde Sahib when we watched him die by the river yonder, I will tell.  In the first place, is it true that the English have set the heel of the Bengali on their own neck, and that there is no more English rule in the land?’

‘I am here,’ said Tallantire, ‘and I serve the Maharanee of England.’

’The Mullah said otherwise, and further that because we loved Orde Sahib the Government sent us a pig to show that we were dogs, who till now have been held by the strong hand.  Also that they were taking away the white soldiers, that more Hindustanis might come, and that all was changing.’

This is the worst of ill-considered handling of a very large country.  What looks so feasible in Calcutta, so right in Bombay, so unassailable in Madras, is misunderstood by the North and entirely changes its complexion on the banks of the Indus.  Khoda Dad Khan explained as clearly as he could that, though he himself intended to be good, he really could not answer for the more reckless members of his tribe under the leadership of the Blind Mullah.  They might or they might not give trouble, but they certainly had no intention whatever of obeying the new Deputy Commissioner.  Was Tallantire perfectly sure that in the event of any systematic border-raiding the force in the district could put it down promptly?

‘Tell the Mullah if he talks any more fool’s talk,’ said Tallantire curtly, ’that he takes his men on to certain death, and his tribe to blockade, trespass-fine, and blood-money.  But why do I talk to one who no longer carries weight in the counsels of the tribe?’

Khoda Dad Khan pocketed that insult.  He had learned something that he much wanted to know, and returned to his hills to be sarcastically complimented by the Mullah, whose tongue raging round the camp-fires was deadlier flame than ever dung-cake fed.

IV

Be pleased to consider here for a moment the unknown district of Kot-Kumharsen.  It lay cut lengthways by the Indus under the line of the Khusru hills—­ramparts of useless earth and tumbled stone.  It was seventy miles long by fifty broad, maintained a population of something less than two hundred thousand, and paid taxes to the extent of forty thousand pounds a year on an area that was by rather more than half sheer, hopeless waste.  The cultivators were not gentle people, the miners for salt were less gentle still,