"What say you, friend?--how will this matter end?" Chunda Beg seated himself on the wall, against which the havildar was leaning, peering out into the darkness. His rifle lay across his arms. "Hai, Chunda, is that you?" replied Gur Buksh, in a low tone. "I thought you were snoring on your charpoy. ’Tis a chill night." "I slept indeed a little--forty winks, as the sahibs say; then I rose and came out to seek wisdom of thee, O experienced one. How will this matter end, I ask?" "Who can tell!" said the havildar with a shrug. "The gods know; I know not." "You do not know; of course I did not suppose you a soothsayer, a man of double sight, though there are such; I have seen them, and heard them foretell things that most certainly came to pass. But they were fakirs, haggard of cheek and eye, and dirty--mashallah! how dirty! What I meant, friend, was that you, being a man of war, and wise in many things, should enlighten my simplicity, and say what is the blossom and fruit of your meditations on these strange happenings." Gur Buksh did not turn his head, but gazed steadily out across the stream. On each side one of his men was patrolling the wall; the rest of the Sikhs were sleeping under blankets on the ground a few yards away, ready to spring up at a whisper. "The Bengali says we shall all be cut into little pieces," Chunda Beg went on. "He will make good carving, being very plump." "The Bengali is the son and grandson of asses," grunted Gur Buksh. "He reads books!" "The sahibs read books too," suggested the khansaman. "That is different. They read the wisdom of their own people; the Bengali reads, and imagines he becomes one of them, and talks foolishness." "That is true. Yet in this case perhaps it is not foolishness. There are many hungry beasts lurking down the track yonder." "Hyenas!" "Twenty thousand of them, says Fazl." "Flat-nosed Kafirs; what are they to us?" "That is true; they are of very little account. Still, there is a great number of them, and--correct me if I am wrong, havildar--a hundred hyenas are perhaps a match for one lion." "Look you, khansaman, we have to make every man here believe that he is a lion. I do not deny that we are in a strait place, but what is that? I have been in strait places before. Hai! was I not one of the thirty with a young sahib in the hills, and did we not defend a post against a monstrous rabble of Khels, and drive them off, and strike such fear into the dogs that they slunk away and troubled us no more?" The havildar’s eyes gleamed as he recalled that fight. "And are our young sahibs even as that one?" said the khansaman. "The huzur--may he sleep well!--was a good man, but these two striplings are very young."