He shook his head. "The Presence speaks riddles. The fire comes to some folk, to many of the sahibs--to you, perhaps. God knows! The Pathans are different. Our work is fighting."

Dick, looking at his companion's sinewy strength, thought it not unlikely. "While we are waiting, Afzul," he said idly, "tell me the finest fight you ever were in. Don't be modest; out with it!"

"Wherefore not? Victory is Fate, and only women hang their heads over success. The best fight, you say? 'Twas over yonder to the north. There is a dip; but one way up and down. Twenty of us Barakzais and they were fifteen; but they were ahead of us in count, for, by Allah! their wives were so ugly that we didn't care to carry them off."

"Why should you?"

"'Twas a feud. Once, God knows when, a Budakshân Nurzai carried off one of ours and began it. If the women ran out, we killed the men instead. So it was a moonlight night, and the fifteen were fast asleep, snoring like hogs. By Allah! my heart beat as we crept behind the rocks on our bellies, knowing that a rolling stone might waken them. But God was good, and chk! they bled to death, like the pigs they were, before their eyes were wide open."

Dick Smith stared incredulously. "You call that the best fight you ever were in? I call it--" The epithet remained unspoken as he started to his feet with a shout. "By George! I see the glitter. Yonder, Afzul! by the turn. Hurrah! hurrah!"

He was off at long swinging strides, careless of the fact that the Pathan never moved. The latter's keen eyes followed the lad with a certain regret, and then turned to the straggling file of soldiers now plainly visible.

"Marsden sahib with the advance guard," he muttered. "Why did I give in to those cursed hawk's eyes when my bullet was all but in his heart! Wah-illah! his bravery made me a coward, and now my life is his. But I will return it, and then we shall cry quits. Yonder's the subadâr. By God! my knife will be in his big belly ere long, and some of those gibing Punjâbis shall jest no more."

So he watched them keenly with a fierce joy, while Dick tore down the hill, to be brought, by an ominous rattle among the rifles below, to a remembrance of his dress. Then he waited, hands down, in the open, until the advance guard came within hail of his friendly voice; when he received the whole regiment with open arms, as if the Peirâk were his special property. Perhaps he had some right to consider it so, seeing that he was the only Englishman who had ever attempted to make those barren heights his head-quarters. But, as he explained to Philip Marsden, while they climbed the narrow gully hemmed in by perpendicular rocks which led to the summit, the breaks in communication from storms and other causes had been so constant, that he had cut himself adrift from head-quarters at Jumwar in order to be on the spot, and so avoid the constant worry of small expeditions with an escort; without which he was not allowed to traverse the unsettled country on either side.

"Here I am safe enough," he said with a laugh; "and if I could only get my assistant, a Bengali bâbu, to live at the other hut I have built on the northern descent, we could defy all difficulties. But he is in such a blind funk that if I go out he retires to bed and locks the door. The only time he is happy is when a regiment is on the road."