For many years the dwellers in the plains of the Panjab had suffered from the encroachments of their neighbours in the hills. At first these hill-men only came to the plains in the winter-time, when their own bare lands became uninhabitable from frost and snow, and returned in the summer, when they might find sustenance for their flocks, and good hunting. But seeing the weakness of the plain-dwellers and the fertility of their soil, the hill-men had not been satisfied with paying these winter visits, and, after remaining as uninvited guests, returning to their own place without having made a domicile in the plains. They began to regard the land on which they temporarily settled as theirs, and by and by exacted tribute from the rightful owners. Thus they became possessed of two homes, one for the winter, one for the summer. Naturally this seizure of property was little to the liking of the plain-dwellers. They made some resistance and fought the oppressors, but were no match in arms for the more warlike hill-men. When, however, the Panjab was incorporated in the dominions of John Company, some of the dispossessed land-owners took advantage of the well-known respect of the British for law to make an attempt to recover their property through the agency of their new rulers; and it was to show cause why he should not yield the lands he held in the plain that Minghal Khan, one of the hill chieftains, had been summoned before the deputy-commissioner. Minghal obeyed the summons grudgingly. In the hills he was free, and owned no master save God; it irked him that any one, least of all the sahib-log, infidels, eaters of pigs, should question his rights in the plains; for though he knew that the lands in dispute were not his by inheritance, yet might was right, and if the plain-men were not strong enough to hold them--why, so much the worse for them. And when he came down from the hills to argue the case before the British commissioner, he begged his nearest neighbour, Rahmut Khan of Shagpur, to accompany him and give him at least moral support. Rahmut did not refuse this request; but he was above all things a warrior; he had no skill in reasoning, like his more wily neighbour Minghal; and while the latter was using all his eloquence, every trick and artifice of which he was capable, to persuade Mr. Barclay that forcible possession was of more account than title-deeds, Rahmut amused himself by talking to and playing with the deputy-commissioner's little son. The boy's mother had died in Lahore some little while before, and his father kept him constantly in his company, even when his duties called him into remote parts of his district.