“A razor would slit the leather easily,” suggested another man. “Then with a hand inserted carefully through the slit, so as not to widen it more than needful, a man could soon discover the contents. And later, the bag might be dropped or pushed violently against some sharp thing, to explain the cut.” Ismail shook his head. “Why? What could he do to thee?” “It is because I know not what he would do to me that I will do nothing!” answered Ismail. “He is not at all like other sahibs I have had dealings with. This man does unexpected things. This man is not mad, he has a devil. I have it in my heart to love this man. But such talk is foolishness. We are all her men!” “Aye! We are her men!” came the chorus, so that King looked up and watched them over the open book. At dawn, when the train pulled out, the thirty prisoners sat safely locked in third-class compartments. King lay lazily on the cushions of a first-class carriage in the rear, utterly absorbed in the principles of antiseptic dressing, as if that had anything to do with Prussians and the Khyber Pass; and Ismail attended to the careful packing of soda water bottles in the ice-box on the floor. “Shall I open the little bag, sahib?” he asked. King shook his head. Ismail shook the bag. “The sound is as of things of much importance all disordered,” he said sagely. “It might be well to rearrange.” “Put it over there!” King ordered. “Set it down!” Ismail obeyed and King laid his book down to light another of his black cheroots. The theme of antiseptics ceased to exercise its charm over him. He peeled off his tunic, changed his shirt and lay back in sweet contentment. Headed for the “Hills,” who would not be contented, who had been born in their very shadow?--in their shadow, of a line of Britons who have all been buried there! “The day after to-morrow I'll see snow!” he promised himself. And Ismail, grinning with yellow teeth through a gap in his wayward beard, understood and sympathized. Forward in the third-class carriages the prisoners hugged themselves and crooned as they met old landmarks and recognized the changing scenery. There was a new cleaner tang in the hot wind that spoke of the “Hills” and home! Delhi had drawn them as Monte Carlo attracts the gamblers of all Europe. But Delhi had spewed them out again, and oh! how exquisite the promise of the “Hills” was, and the thunder of the train that hurried--the bumping wheels that sang Himahlayas--Himahlyas!--the air that blew in on them unscented--the reawakened memory--the heart's desire for the cold and the snow and the cruelty--the dark nights and the shrieking storms and the savagery of the Land of the Knife ahead! The journey to Peshawur, that ought to have been wearisome because they were everlastingly shunted into sidings to make way for roaring south-bound troop trains and kept waiting at every wayside station because the trains ahead of them were blocked three deep, was no less than a jubilee progress!