This matter of the long-continued peace in Mandu was not wholly owing to the policy of its present Rajah; for, during all the early part of his reign, there had been quiet in the turbulent north. Now, however, sinister rumors began to spread and grow. It was, indeed, a time of universal disquiet; for this was the middle of the constructive period of Indian history: the time of the fusion of two great races. Conquest had begun two hundred years before, under the great lord of Ghazni. The second conqueror, Mohammed Ghori, had been dead but forty years. And, since then, the first line of slave kings, founded by Aybek, had been broken by another slave:—Balban, the mighty minister of studious Mahmoud. Under him began the first concerted campaigns into Gujerat and Malwa, which were eventually to result in the conquest of everything north of the Dekkhan. In Delhi, now the capital of Moslem India, there dwelt more than one powerful general of the Prophet’s faith. Among these, Osman-ibn-Omar, the Asra, had won high reputation for the courage and daring that were, indeed, characteristic of his race. In his youth he had known Lahore, even mountain-built Ghazni; and now, his father long ago honorably dead in battle, the son, himself more than sixty years old, dwelt in Delhi, yearning for new wars. And it was eventually he, still bearing in mind an old, disastrous campaign of Dhár in the Vindhyas, who now, in the year 1249, swore to his lord a mighty oath that in him Malwa should find its conqueror. He would go down to the south, and learn whether a cousin of his, whilom head of the Asra race, were still, by any chance, alive and in captivity among the unconquered natives. But of this matter the folk of Mandu, peacefully engaged in the garnering of rice and millet, knew nothing, and as little cared. Oman, perhaps, had some premonition of what was about to come. At any rate, during this winter, his spirit was restless. He had recourse to many long-abandoned methods of tranquillizing himself. He felt that he was becoming world-troubled. The still waters of his nature had been disturbed and set into motion by a too intimate knowledge of various matters. And all his efforts after calm brought him but temporary relief.