When we returned we had a good laugh over our success. The adventure was novel to us all, and we pictured to ourselves the mortification and chagrin of the robbers, when they should arrive, at finding their stronghold plundered of all its valuables, and their friends lying dead at the threshold, instead of being ready to receive them and recount their adventures of the evening. As a better place of security, I took the jewels and silver vessels I had found to our house, and locked them up in the strong-room, to be disposed of afterwards as best they might be. My father, I need not say, was overpowered with joy, and every new feat that I performed seemed to render me more dear to him. He caressed me as though I had still been a child. "Wait till these actions are known in Hindostan, my son," said he, with enthusiasm; "I am much mistaken indeed if they do not raise you to a rank which has been attained by few, that of Subadar." I did not reply to him, but I made an inward determination to venture everything to attain it. I was aware that nothing but a very successful expedition, coupled with large booty and a deed of some notoriety and daring, could raise me to the rank my father had mentioned; but that it could be attained I had no doubt, since others had reached it before me;--and why should not I, whose whole soul was bent upon winning fame through deeds which men should tremble to hear. Two days after our adventure at the robbers' cave, the whole of the Karwan and adjacent neighbourhood were thrown into great excitement from the discovery of the dead bodies by their smell and the number of vultures they attracted. Various were the conjectures as to the perpetrators of the violent deed, and many attributed it to the treachery of some of the band of robbers; however, all agreed that a great benefit had been done by unknown agents. Much of the stolen property was recovered; among it was some of great value which had been stolen from a sahoukar a short time before, and which in our hurry and confusion had escaped us; but, as it was, we had got a considerable booty. All the gold and silver was secretly melted into lumps by one of our men who understood how to do it, and it was valued by weight at upwards of seven thousand rupees.