These captives were greeted by the onlookers with shouts of triumph, but with no insults or even unfriendly remarks. The followers of the Prophet were still rather mythical enemies to these dwellers of the Dekhan. Mahmoud of Ghazni was a name they recognized; but Aybek, the great slave, who had just mounted the throne of Delhi, was as unreal to them as their own kings who had died three thousand years ago, in the first conquest of India. These captives now among them were tangible enough, but they presented too abject an appearance to give any idea of their force in battle. The chagrin of captivity, the many days of riding and walking, the intolerable suffering occasioned by their bonds, had broken the spirit of all save one, who rode at the head of the pitiable procession. He was young, this man, good to look on even in his unkempt state, and his clothes, through the stains of war and woe, showed their richness. He sat straight on his unsaddled mule, and his head was not bent down. He seemed to notice nothing of what passed around him, but kept his eyes fixed far ahead on the long, curving range of blackened mountains, lighted by the glow of the sunset sky that blazed behind them. His dignity and his unconsciousness made him a continual object of interest to the crowd, and the slave-master was under a running fire of questions which he was not slow to answer. “He is a prince, a son of the enemy’s leader. He will bring a great ransom,” he repeated again and again, proudly. Cheers never failed to follow the explanation; and, after some twenty minutes of this trial, the Arab’s head for the first time drooped, and a deep sigh broke from him. “Let not my lord grieve,” whispered the person riding next behind him, a boy, scarcely more than fifteen years in age. “My lord will be ransomed.” But the Mohammedan sighed again, making no answer; and the slave-master, overhearing the whisper, cut off the conversation with a quick stroke of his whip on the back of the boy, who bore it, as he bore all things for his Prince, without a sound.