"Wah! Ahmed-ji, I will get leave and go and kill that dog Dilasah. It cannot be yet, alas! for I have already had my leave for this year. But Dilasah shall die, and you shall be chief; by my beard, it shall be so." "I do not want to be chief, Sherdil," said Ahmed; then, brought face to face with his thoughts, "I want to join the Guides--if I lose no caste by it." "Hush! do not speak of caste. We are all high caste--we Guides." "But you, Sherdil?" "Hush! no one knows. Lumsden Sahib will only take men of good caste. I had to lie: lying is an honest man's wings, you know. Hai! you will lose no caste. We are all good men. But you are young, Ahmed, and there are many waiting. Those outside the walls: you saw them: they have encamped there to wait until there is room for them. And they are good men--some of the finest brigands of the hills, and sons of chiefs among them. I fear me you are too young. There are thirty waiting, and they live out there with their friends, spending their money in feeding themselves and their horses; can you do the same?" "For a month; no more." Sherdil drew a long face. "A month! it is very little. Yet it may be well. Wah! it shall be well. Maybe there will be room for one or two in a month. And a month will give us time. I will teach you." "Teach me what?" And then Sherdil explained Lumsden's way of filling the vacancies as they occurred. He held a competition among the candidates, and took them to the rifle range to shoot it off among themselves: the best shots got the places. "And if there are some who shoot equally well, what then?" asked Ahmed. "Oh, then he does as Hodson Sahib did. He makes them ride unbacked horses, and the man that rides furthest before being thrown off, that is the man for the Guides." "I can shoot, and I can ride, Sherdil," said Ahmed, with a smile. "I do not fear the tests." "That may well be: but you are young, we have no boys in the Guides. Yet it may be possible. If we could give you a moustache and the beginnings of a beard!" "That may not be until Allah wills." "Nay, there is a very cunning magician in the bazar at Peshawar, who with some few touches of a stick can make the semblance of hair on the face. So we might add a few years to you till the tests are over: after that it will be as Heaven wills." Ahmed thought over this suggestion for a minute, and then said-- "Nay, it cannot be so, Sherdil. Dost thou want me to be shamed? What if the shooting and riding be good and then it is proved that the hair is false? It would make my face fall before my countrymen." "Thy countrymen! Hai! If thou thinkest so, better go straightway to Lumsden Sahib and say, 'I am a Feringhi, of the sahib-log like yourself. Give me clothes such as the sahibs wear, and a portion of pig to eat.'"