"Hai!" said Sherdil, with a sigh. "Now it is coming, Ahmed-ji. Verily thou wilt be a dafadar, or maybe a jamadar, before Sherdil, son of Assad. What must be will be." Ahmed wondered what the summons to the general's presence could mean. He had had a part in the brushes with the enemy, which had been of daily occurrence since the corps arrived; but he had done nothing to signalize himself. Hodson gave him a quick look as he came up and saluted. "Your name?" he said in the Pashtu tongue. "Ahmed, son of Rahmut Khan of Shagpur, sahib," said the boy. "A good specimen of the breed," said Hodson to the others. "The general wants you to go into the city," he added, speaking again in Ahmed's own language. There was no officer in India more expert than Hodson in the speech of the natives. "I am ready, sahib," said Ahmed at once. "You'll have to pretend to be a mutineer, you know." "With the hazur's pardon I will not do that. There is no need." "Then how will you go? The khaki would betray you." "I would go, sahib, as I went with Sherdil, son of Assad, to Mandan, the village of Minghal Khan." "Ah! and how was that?" Ahmed told how the company of Afghan traders had entered the village, and about the box containing porcelain from Delhi. He related the story simply, without any of the boastful garniture which comes so readily to an oriental's lips. The officers listened with interest, Hodson keeping his keen blue eyes fixed on the boy's face. "This is the oddest Pathan I ever came across," he said in English when Ahmed had finished the story. To Ahmed he said, "Then you will go as an Afghan trader? How will you do that? Traders do not go alone." "If I might have Sherdil, son of Assad, and Rasul Khan, and Dilawur----" "No, no, that won't do.--He wants half your corps, Daly.--You must go alone." "As the hazur pleases." He paused, and thought for a minute, the officers watching him. "I will go alone, sahib," he said. "The tale will be that I was one of many, travelling towards Delhi with Persian shawls for the princes' women. And we were set upon by a band of Gujars, and I alone escaped." "But if you go alone the Gujars may catch you, for of course you cannot go to the city from the Ridge; you must approach as from a distant part." "It is as the sahib says." "You will take the risk?" "If the captain sahib commands." "Never met so direct a fellow," said Hodson to the others. "My spies have a good deal to say about bakshish, as a rule. Well," he went on in Pashtu, "what will you want?" "Clothes, shawls, and a camel, sahib." "And where will you get them?" "In the bazar at Karnal, sahib." "Steal them, eh?" "Buy them with the hazur's rupees," said Ahmed, with a smile. "And what are you going to do in Delhi?" "I wait for commands, sahib." "Can you write?" "No, sahib." "Of course not. Then you will be no good to me." "But with rupees I can pay a munshi, sahib."