“The price of an entrance has come of late to be the life of an English arrficer! Many an one the English have dubbed Ghazi, because he crossed the border and buried his knife in a man on church parade! They hang and burn them, knowing our Muslim law, that denies Heaven to him who is hanged and burned. Yet the man they miscall ghazi sought but the key to Khinjan Caves, with no thought at all about Heaven! Thou art a British arrficer. It may be they will let thee enter the Caves at her bidding. It may be, too, that they will keep thee in a cage there for some chief's son to try his knife on when the time comes to win admission! Listen--man o' my heart!--so strict is the rule that boys born in the Caves, when they come to manhood, must go and slay an Englishman and earn outlawry before they may come back; and lest they prove fearful and betray the secret, ten men follow each. They die by the hand of one or other of the ten unless they have slain their man within two weeks. So the secret has been kept more years than ten men can remember!” (That estimate was doubtless due to a respect for figures and bore no relation to the length of a human generation.) “Whom did she kill to gain admission?” King asked him unexpectedly. “Ask her!” said Ismail. “It is her business.” “And thou? Was the life of a British officer the price paid?” “Nay. I slew a mullah.” The calmness of the admission, and the satisfaction that its memory seemed to bring the owner made King laugh. He found lawless satisfaction for himself in that Ismail's blood-price should have been a priest, not one of his brother officers. A man does not follow King's profession for health, profit or sentiment's sake, but healthy sentiment remains. The loyalty that drives him, and is its own most great reward, makes him a man to the middle. He liked Ismail. He could not have liked him in the same way if he had known him guilty of English blood, which is only proof, of course, that sentiment and common justice are not one. But sentiment remains. Justice is an ideal. “Be warned and go back!” urged Ismail. “Come with me, then.” “Nay, I am her man. She waits for me!” “I imagine she waits for me!” laughed King. “Forward! We have rested in this place long enough!” So on they went, climbing and descending the naked ramparts that lead eastward and upward and northward to the Roof of Mother Earth--Ismail ever grumbling into his long beard, and King consumed by a fiercer enthusiasm than ever had yet burned in him, “Forward! Forward! Cast hounds forward! Forward in any event!” says Cocker. It is only regular generals in command of troops in the field who must keep their rear open for retreat. The Secret Service thinks only of the goal ahead.