“Why they did not at once extinguish it I cannot tell. Perhaps they had pity on me for my youth’s sake; at all events, they spared the life, and after a journey which I shudder still to recollect, we reached their head-quarters, and my long captivity began. “Their chief was a hater of the English, stern and desperate--not by any means the usual type of man to be met with among his countrymen: less treacherous, less supple, and if not less a tyrant, at least more tyrannically wise. Liberty for his subjects he did not at all conceive of, of course, but the wild liberty of despotism was an instinct and necessity with our Rajah; he hated foreign domination with an energetic hatred, such as one could not fail to respect, even though one suffered by it. “The Rajah fancied my services might be of use to him. You will smile when I tell you how, Adam. He thought of the De Boignys, and Skinners, and the native troops they drilled, and despotized, and inspired with the mechanical heroism of mercenary soldiers; and he believed that I could drill his wild followers for him, could teach them the unfaltering British discipline, could form them into mechanical pipe-clayed battalions like their European enemies. “And I tried to do it, Adam, for at six-and-twenty one would not choose to die; if I had known perhaps the long probation which awaited me, I might have shrunk and desired the end at once; but this end is not naturally desired ever, I think--I should still choose to live, I believe, were I placed in the same circumstances again; and I hoped more warmly then. “I began to be artful like themselves. I intrigued and schemed to have a share in the education of the young chief, and at last I attained my object. Ahmed, the future Rajah--the presumptive heir--I was to have the honour of teaching him my language. “And I taught him my language, Adam; and Ahmed at the head of his tribe speaks English, which has the fragrance of the Scottish border upon it. I used to smile when I heard him. “We grew very good friends, my pupil and I. Heathen and stranger as Ahmed is, he was my boy, Adam, and we came to like each other--so much so--” said Hew Murray, averting his head a little, “that if I had not heard of you all at home, and only my place vacant, I scarcely think I should have cared for my new freedom.” There was a pause. “We had but one book,” said Hew, resuming, “my Bible, which I had managed to preserve with great difficulty. If I had been teaching the father instead of the son, in that glowing Eastern country, and with that Bible, I could have made a poet of him, Adam!