"Nay, I have often sought for it in my mind, but it is gone. Rahmut knows it, and Minghal also, but it is clean gone from me." "Then how could I prove to the Feringhis that I am one of them? No, I like it not; and furthermore, Rahmut lies in prison, and I begin to believe that it is even as thou sayest--that Dilasah betrayed him. Is it not my duty by some means to bring Rahmut back and deal with Dilasah as he deserves?" "Hai! foolish talk again. Think of what I say, Ahmed-ji; the time is not long; Assad will soon be back, and then if thou art not gone, Dilasah will seek thy life and take it." Ahmed was impressed by the warnings of Ahsan, still more when he found that the old gate-keeper's views were shared by Rahmut Khan's family. Since Minghal's raid these ladies, with their children and servants, like Ahmed himself, had remained in the tower, and the chief's usual house had been unoccupied. Dilasah had been given the house in which he had lived before his breach with his uncle years before. On the day after Ahsan had spoken so seriously, when Ahmed paid his usual visit of respect to Rahmut's principal wife, Meriem, the lady strongly urged him not to go about the village alone. "That evil man Dilasah hates thee," she said. "Gather some of the young men who love Rahmut and thee, Ahmed-ji, and have them always about thee when thou goest into the streets." Ahmed thought the advice worth taking, but the position irked him. The constraint was unendurable after his customary life of freedom, and he felt that it must be ended one way or another. The obvious way--the natural way to a Pathan--was to meet Dilasah with his own weapons and kill him at the first opportunity. But Dilasah's party was stronger than his own, and supposing his enemy were out of the way, the prejudice against him as one of Feringhi birth would render his position still very insecure. The death of Dilasah would probably result in a feud between his faction and Ahmed's. No one could say how such a strife would end, but certainly it would in no way help towards the restoration of Rahmut Khan to his village, the object Ahmed had most at heart. The boy concluded that he had better leave the village and go to Peshawar, to see whether some means might not be found of freeing the old chief. It was a debt he owed to the man who had saved his life and loved him so well. Ahsan might talk of the difficulties, but Ahsan was an old man; old men often saw difficulties where young men could see none. Ahsan would not have crept to the shed and blown up Minghal's powder; Ahsan would not have taken part in Sherdil's daring stratagem against Minghal's village; yet both of these hazardous enterprises had been successful. Ahsan might talk as he pleased: certainly this was what Ahmed would do.