"So, your Highness, I have heard."
"Yes, it is true," continued the Khan. "Moreover, the fairy bore him a daughter who is still alive, though very old."
"So there is still a fairy in the family," replied Captain Phillips pleasantly, while he wondered what in the world the Khan was driving at. "Yes, indeed, I know that. For only a week ago I was asked by a poor man up the valley to secure your Highness's intercession. It seems that he is much plagued by a fairy who has taken possession of his house, and since your Highness is related to the fairies, he would be very grateful if you would persuade his fairy to go away."
"I know," said the Khan gravely. "The case has already been brought to me. The fellow will open closed boxes in his house, and the fairy resents it."
"Then your Highness has exorcised the fairy?"
"No; I have forbidden him to open boxes in his house," said the Khan; and then, with a smile, "But it was not of him we were speaking, but of the fairy in my family."
He leaned forward and his voice shook.
"She sends me warnings, Captain Sahib. Two nights ago, by the flat stone where the fairies dance, she heard them—the voices of an innumerable multitude in the air talking the Chilti tongue—talking of trouble to come in the near days."
He spoke with burning eyes fixed upon the Resident and with his fingers playing nervously in and out among the hairs of his beard. Whether the Khan really believed the story of the fairies—there is nothing more usual than a belief in fairies in the countries bordered by the snow-peaks of the Hindu Kush—or whether he used the story as a blind to conceal the real source of his fear, the Resident could not decide. But what he did know was this: The Khan of Chiltistan was desperately afraid. A whole programme of reform was sketched out for the Captain's hearing.
"I have been a good friend to the English, Captain Sahib. I have kept my Mullahs and my people quiet all these years. There are things which might be better, as your Excellency has courteously pointed out to me, and the words have never been forgotten. The taxes no doubt are very burdensome, and it may be the caravans from Bokhara and Central Asia should pay less to the treasury as they pass through Chiltistan, and perhaps I do unjustly in buying what I want from them at my own price." Thus he delicately described the system of barefaced robbery which he practised on the traders who passed southwards to India through Chiltistan. "But these things can be altered. Moreover," and here he spoke with an air of distinguished virtue, "I propose to sell no more of my people into slavery—No, and to give none of them, not even the youngest, as presents to my friends. It is quite true of course that the wood which I sell to the merchants of Peshawur is cut and brought down by forced labour, but next year I am thinking of paying. I have been a good friend to the English all my life, Colonel Sahib."