Instead of the mullah, growling texts out of a Quran on his lap, the Orakzai Pathan sat and sunned himself in the cave mouth, emitting worldlier wisdom unadulterated with divinity. As King went toward him to see to whom he spoke he grinned and pointed with his thumb, and King looked down on some sick and wounded men who sat in a crowd together on the ramp, ten feet or so below the cave. They seemed stout soldierly fellows. Men of another type were being kept at a distance by dint of argument and threats. Away in the distance was Muhammad Anim with his broad back turned to the cave, in altercation with a dozen other mullahs. For the time he was out of the reckoning. “Some of these are wounded,” the Pathan explained. “Some have sores. Some have the belly ache. Then again, some are sick of words, hot and cold by day and night. All have served in the army. All have medals. All are deserters, some for one reason, some for another and some for no reason at all. Bull-with-a-beard looks the other way. Speak thou to them about the pardon that is offered!” So King went down among them, taking some of the tools of his supposed trade with him and trying to crowd down the triumph that would well up. The seed he had sown had multiplied by fifty in a night. He wanted to shout, as men once did before the walls of Jericho. A man bared a sword cut. He bent over him, and if the mullah had turned to look there would have been no ground for suspicion. So in a voice just loud enough to reach them all, he repeated what he had told the Pathan the day before. “But who art thou?” asked one of them suspiciously. Perhaps there had been a shade too much cocksureness in the hakim's voice, but he acted faultlessly when he answered. Voice, accent, mannerism, guilty pride, were each perfect. “Political offender. My brother yonder in the cave mouth”--(The Pathan smirked. He liked the imputation)--“suggested I seek pardon, too. He thinks if I persuade many to apply for pardon then the sirkar may forgive me for service rendered.” The Pathan's smirk grew to a grin. He liked grandly to have the notion fathered on himself; and his complacency of course was suggestive of the hakim's trustworthiness. But the East is ever cautious. “Some say thou art a very great liar,” remarked a man with half a nose. “Nay,” answered King. “Liar I may be, but I am one against many. Which of you would dare stand alone and lie to all the others? Nay, sahibs, I am a political offender, not a soldier!” They all laughed at that and seizing the moment when they were in a pliant mood the Orakzai Pathan proceeded to bring proposals to a head. “Are we agreed?” he asked. “Or have we waggled our beards all night long in vain? Take him with us, say I. Then, if pardons are refused us he at least will gain nothing by it. We can plunge our knives in him first, whatever else happens.” “Aye!”