"Sez he speaks English, sir," said the corporal.
"So you brought him into mess instead of handing him over to the sergeant! If he spoke all the tongues of the Pentecost you've no business—"
Again the bundle groaned and muttered. Little Mildred had risen from his place to inspect. He jumped back as though he had been shot.
"Perhaps it would be better, sir, to send the men away," said he to the colonel, for he was a much-privileged subaltern. He put his arms round the rag-bound horror as he spoke, and dropped him into a chair. It may not have been explained that the littleness of Mildred lay in his being six feet four, and big in proportion. The corporal, seeing that an officer was disposed to look after the capture, and that the colonel's eye was beginning to blaze, promptly removed himself and his men. The mess was left alone with the carbine thief, who laid his head on the table and wept bitterly, hopelessly, and inconsolably, as little children weep.
Hira Singh leaped to his feet with a long-drawn vernacular oath "Colonel Sahib," said he, "that man is no Afghan, for they weep 'Ai! Ai!' Nor is he of Hindustan, for they weep,'Oh! Ho!' He weeps after the fashion of the white men, who say 'Ow! Ow!'"
"Now where the dickens did you get that knowledge, Hira Singh?" said the captain of the Lushkar team.
"Hear him!" said Hira Singh, simply, pointing at the crumpled figure that wept as though it would never cease.
"He said, 'My God!'" said Little Mildred, "I heard him say it."
The colonel and the mess room looked at the man in silence. It is a horrible thing to hear a man cry. A woman can sob from the top of her palate, or her lips, or anywhere else, but a man cries from his diaphragm, and it rends him to pieces. Also, the exhibition causes the throat of the on-looker to close at the top.
"Poor devil!" said the colonel, coughing tremendously, "We ought to send him to hospital. He's been manhandled."