“But if he was not so shot?” pursued the mullah, a gleam of triumphant malice darting from his cruel eyes.
“Then he is alive?”
The words broke simultaneously from the chief and his brother. But the mullah dropped his eyes to the ground, and for a moment kept silence. Then he said,—
“Would that he were. Would that his end had been that of a soldier. But it was not. Ya, Mahomed! What an end was his! Wah-wah! what an end!”
And the crooked, claw-like fingers clenched and unclenched upon empty air. Murad Afzul, who had been prepared for this psychological moment, now rose, and having salaamed, moved away, for it was not fitting that he should hear the terrible disclosure about to be made to the two brothers.
“The Sirdar Allahyar Khan was a havildar in one of the regiments serving under the Feringhi at the time of the great rising?” went on the mullah, in a kind of slow monotone.
“And by them he was shot, by reason of the part he took against them in the rising,” said the chief. “And, after all, it was what he might expect, for many of the Feringhi were then slain.”
“By them he was not shot, O Chief of the Gularzai whom the Feringhi have named Nawab,” returned the mullah. “By them he was hanged.”
“Hanged?” broke from both, in incredulous horror. “Now that cannot be. The Feringhi would never put to so shameful a death a man of his descent.”
“Yet he was hanged, O chiefs—hanged in such fashion as is not to be named—hanged with a portion of swine flesh tied to his body.”