'Many of our people, if of rank, lock up their wives when they travel.'
'Why?'
'They may be false and artful.'
'And what do you do then?'
He only smiled grimly, and touched the carved silver hilt of the charah in his crimson shawl girdle.
'You treat them with a spirit of selfishness,' said Colville; 'but I know that even Christian men do the same, by making more severe laws for women than themselves, forgetting that by so doing they raise them above themselves.'
But the sirdir knew not what to make of this idea, and so remained silent.
Nearly three weeks had passed since Colville became a prisoner in the fort of Mahmoud Shah, and no tidings had reached him of what was doing in the world of India, beyond the Kyber and other passes, or of what was transpiring in the city of Cabul.
He knew that tidings of the massacre then must have been flashed home by the electric telegraph long since, and that poor Mary would now be mourning for him, as one who was no more!