The new-comers uttered loud shouts of exultation at the ease of their victory, not at first aware of the resolute little band in the tower. It was only when Minghal had entered the chief's house and found it deserted that he suspected what had happened. Then with a grim smile he questioned the villagers, all most obsequious to their new master; and Ahmed, watching the scene from a latticed window high up in the tower, wondered what the smile portended. He expected to see Minghal's men collect the grain-stuffs and everything else of value that the village contained, and then set fire to the houses; but old Ahsan by his side, better acquainted with the long feud which had existed between the two chiefs, stroked his beard and groaned. "Hai! hai!" he muttered. "It has come at last. But I am too old, too old, to serve a new master. Shagpur will have another gate-keeper now, Ahmed-ji." "What meanest thou, old man?" asked Ahmed, wondering. "Minghal has come not for plunder, but for mastery," was the reply. "'Tis what he has meditated for a dozen years; and who can strive against Fate? When the master comes back he will find that Shagpur is no longer his. If he resists he will be slain; if he accepts his lot, he will be loaded with chains or cast out of the village, a beggar to the end of his days." "And what of us, then?" asked Ahmed. "Hai!" said the old man. "As for you, I speak not, Ahmed-ji; but for me, I am too old, as I said. I have my knife." Ahmed looked into the gate-keeper's face. He read there neither fear nor despair, nothing but a calm resolution. Then he uttered a scornful laugh. "No one can strive against Fate, truly," he said; "but who knows that Fate has given us into Minghal's hand? By the beard of the Prophet, Ahsan----" But the old man put his hand on the boy's mouth. "Hush, Ahmed-ji," he said, with a sort of stern tenderness; "'tis not meet, little one, that oath in your mouth. You have well-nigh forgotten, but I do not forget. We are as we were born, and you were born a Feringhi." CHAPTER THE SECOND The Making of a Pathan Eight years before this raid of Minghal's on Shagpur, a small boy, dark, bright-eyed, happy-looking, was sitting on the grass at some little distance from an open tent, nursing a wooden sword, and trying to make conversation in babbling Urdu with a big, swarthy, bearded Pathan who squatted opposite him, and smiled as he tried to understand and answer the little fellow's questions. From the tent came the sound of voices, and the Pathan would now and then lift his eyes from the child and dart a keen glance towards the spot where Mr. George Barclay, deputy-commissioner of the district, was engaged in dealing with one of the troublesome cases that came before him for settlement.