"My lord has many troubles," said Sultána; "but there is One who can and will bear him through all. We will not yield, nor fear, nor complain."
"I feel the difficulty myself," said the chief, pursuing the train of his own thoughts. "In old times when we needed aught, we belted on scimitars and loaded our guns, and made a sudden foray. We came back fewer perhaps in numbers, but anyhow laden with spoil. Now—how am I to provide for your needs and my own? I have not a silver piece left."
"My lord will never shrink from poverty endured for Christ's sake," said Sultána.
"I do not shrink," said the chief; "I know that it is better to starve as a Christian than feast as a Moslem."
"My lord will not starve," said Sultána; "have we not heard that God feeds the ravens?" She had stopped her wheel in order to converse, and now drew the anklets over her slender bare feet, took the jewels from her ears, and the ornaments from her beautiful hair. Silently she placed them beside her husband.
"How could I rob you of your jewels!" he exclaimed, knowing how precious to the women of the East are such personal adornments.
"I need them not," said the daughter of a robber chief—how changed from what she had been in her childhood! "Let me not lay up treasures on earth; mine is the pearl of great price."
And a gift better than gems was to reward the young Afghan wife. In the course of that month a little bud of beauty bloomed beside the parent rose. Sultána clasped in her arms a lovely boy, and in grateful adoration she and her husband devoted him at once to the Lord.
Few earthly joys come without some drawbacks. It caused great dissatisfaction in the fort that the birth of the chief's first-born son was not celebrated by the gluttonous revels and superstitious orgies which had never before been omitted in the Eagle's Nest on such a joyful occasion. Sheep indeed had been killed, and a banquet provided; but vice and profanity had been excluded, and to the special indignation of the old women, not a single charm against the evil eye had been tied around the neck of the babe!
Ali Khan and Sultána had long been making a brave struggle to swim against the tide of dissatisfaction, but now it appeared likely to sweep them away in its current. Mustapha was—and had been for months—plotting against his chief. The traitor tried, and succeeded but too well, in stirring up the smouldering embers of discontent into a flame. He contrived to have another key made for the large outer gate, so that it could be opened without the knowledge of Ali Khan, who, like his predecessor, always kept the key at night. Then Mustapha arranged a meeting of Afghans in a retired spot outside the fort, and to this meeting all the men except Mir Ghazan and Ali Khan himself were invited.