"Nahin, Sahib! He was a Mussulman, my father having had him taught with special care by a holy moulvie,[38] by reason of the fact that his mother had had him sprinkled with holy water by her priests and had taught him the tenets of the Christian faith—doubtless a high and noble one since your honour is of it."
[38] Priest.
"He had been taught the Christian doctrines, then?"
"Without doubt, Sahib. Throughout his childhood; in the absence of his father. And doubtless this aided his foreign blood in making him act thus foolishly."
"Doubtless," I agreed, with a smile.
"Yea, at the last moment he had put his vengeance from him and behaved like a weak fool, throwing away the acid, cleaning the bottle and filling it with pure water. He had intended to give Ibrahim a fright (and also the opprobrious title of the Weeper), to teach him a lesson and to let him go—provided he swore on the Q'ran never to return to Mekran Kot when he left for England…. Such a man was my poor brother. But the hand of Allah intervened and Ibrahim the Weeper lived and died stone blind…. A strange man that poor brother of mine, strong save when his foreign blood and foreign religion arose like poison within him and made him weak…. There was the case of the English Sergeant Larnce-Ishmeet whom he spared and sent into the English lines in the little Border War."
"Lance-Sergeant Smith? What regiment?" I asked.
"I know not, Sahib, save that it was a British Infantry Regiment. (He was not Lance-Sergeant Ishmeet but Sergeant Larnce-Ishmeet.) We … I mean … they … slew many of a Company that was doing rear-guard and their officers being slain and many men also, a Sergeant took them off with great skill. Section by section, from point to point he retired them, and our … their … triumphant joy at the capture and slaughter of the Company was changed to gnashing of teeth—for we lost many and the Company retired safely on the main body. But we got the Sergeant, badly wounded, and my brother would not have him slain. Rather he showed him much honour and had him borne to Mekran Kot, and when he was healed he took him to within sight of the outermost Khyber fort and set him free…. Yet was he not an enemy, Sahib, taken in war? Strange weaknesses had my poor brother…."
"I knew a Sergeant-Major Lawrence-Smith," I remarked, as light dawned on me after pondering "Larnce-Ishmeet." "He shot himself at Duri some time ago."
"He was a brave man," said Mir Daoud Khan. "Peace be upon him."