"Ulla dilâyâ to léonga!" he cried, looking at the King without saluting him. "Khan Mahomed is dead, from a hundred wounds. As I closed his eyes I saw this on the ground; it had fallen from him, so I have brought it;" and flinging a case, containing papers, to the King, he turned away without salutation; shouting the old, cry with his right arm bare, and stretched high above his head, he strode out of the hall, continuing it as he passed out of the building through the attendants and troops, and so away. "Among these papers," said the Secretary, whispering to the King, "are many which, if now disclosed, might make men desperate; they are better kept secret." "I am weary of them all," cried the King impatiently; "look at the judgment of God; we should own it reverently." "Zoolm! Zoolm!" (injustice!) cried a knot of men who had collected at one side of the hall, and had risen from their seats. "Is murder to be done, and pass unchallenged?" Their tone was fierce and defiant, and boded no good. "Peace, O friends!" cried Afzool Khan, stretching out his hands to them. "Is this a time for strife? who can say by whose hands he died? Yet better dead, than for this guilt to be proved before all, by these witnesses--his own hand and seals. O friends, brothers in the faith! there is the throne we have to defend, and we should count it holy martyrdom to die before it. We are ready; will ye be tardy?" "Deen, Deen! listen to Afzool Khan! Futteh-i-Nubbee!" (Victory to the Prophet) the Khan's battle-cry, was shouted with deafening clamour. "Death to the unbelievers!" "Silence, friends!" cried the Peer, as there was a short cessation of the shouting; "listen to me. One traitor is dead, but are we less than men that we permit Sivaji Bhóslay, his accomplice, to defile our beards? Deen, Deen! cry to God for victory. Deen, Deen!" he continued, rising and raising his voice to a shrill scream, as he stretched out his arms, "the Prophet hears us, and Ali, and the holy martyrs, and so will ye be martyrs and enjoy paradise if ye die." Again, again his cry was raised, the fanatical cry of Islam, which no Moslem can hear without emotion; and grave men hitherto unmoved, roused with the rest to frantic enthusiasm by the holy man's words, threw themselves on each other's necks and wept aloud. "And now, friends," continued the King, when he could be heard, "let him who would punish Sivaji Bhóslay for a thousand crimes and treacheries, take up the gage I place here. In the name of God and the Prophet, let who will take it, I accept him;" and so saying he motioned to an attendant, who, bringing forward a salver covered with a brocaded cloth, set it down on the edge of the dais before the King, and uncovered it. On the salver lay a single birra of Pân, covered with gold leaf, one of those which, on the conclusion of the ceremony, would be distributed by thousands. Who would take it up?