Then, perhaps because the crowd had begun to whisper, and she wanted all attention, she raised both arms to toss back the golden hair that came cascading nearly to her knees. And as if the crowd knew that symptom well, it drew its breath in sharply and grew very still. “Muhammad Anim!” she said, and she might have been wooing him. “That was a devil's trick!” It was rather an astounding statement, coming from lovely lips in such a setting. It was rather suggestive of a driver's whiplash, flicked through the air for a beginning. Muhammad Anim continued glaring and did not answer her, so in her own good time, when she had tossed her golden hair back once or twice again, she developed her meaning. “We who are free of Khinjan Caves do not send men out to bring recruits. We know better than to bid our men tell lies for others at the gate. Nor, seeking proof for our new recruit, do we send men to hunt a head for him--not even those of us who have a lashkar that we call our own, mullah Muhammad Anim. Each of us earns his own way in!” The mullah Muhammad Anim began to stroke his beard, but he made no answer. “And--mullah Muhammad Anim, thou wandering man of God--when that lashkar has foolishly been sent and has failed, is it written in the Kalamullah saying we should pretend there was a head, and that the head was stolen? A lie is a lie, Muhammad Anim! Wandering perhaps is good, if in search of the way. Is it good to lose the way, and to lie, thou true follower of the Prophet?” She smiled, tossing her hair back. Her eyes challenged, her lips mocked him and her chin scorned. The crowd breathed hard and watched. The mullah muttered something in his beard, and sat down, and the crowd began to roar applause at her. But she checked it with a regal gesture, and a glance of contempt at the mullah that was alone worth a journey across the “Hills” to see. “Guards!” she said quietly. And the crowd's sigh then was like the night wind in a forest. “Away with those three of Muhammad Anim's men!” Twelve of the arena guards threw down their shields with a sudden clatter and seized the prisoners, four to each. The crowd shivered with delicious anticipation. The doomed men neither struggled nor cried, for fatalism is an anodyne as well as an explosive. King set his teeth. Yasmini, with both hands behind her head, continued to smile down on them all as sweetly as the stars shine on a battle-field. She nodded once; and then all was over in a minute. With a ringing “Ho!” and a run, the guards lifted their victims shoulder high and bore them forward. At the river bank they paused for a second to swing them. Then, with another “Ho!” they threw them like dead rubbish into the swift black water.