Father and son both served in the Khattak double company of the ---- Rifles. Shahbaz Khan, retired subadar, died after eighteen months of the Great War without hearing a shot fired. It was very galling to the old man to be out of it, for his idea of bliss was a kind of glorified Armageddon. He had fought in Tochi and Waziristan, but these frontier scraps were unsatisfying. "It was only playing at war," he said. He longed for a padshah-ki-lerai, "a war of kingdoms," in the old Mahabharat style. "Sahib," he said, "I should like to be up to my knees in gore with thousands of dead all round me." But the old man was born fifteen years too soon. He would have been happy in the night attack upon Beit Aieesa, or even perhaps with Shere Ali on the right bank at Sheikh Saad, when the regiment rushed the Turkish trenches. Shere Ali was with the regiment in Egypt, left the canal with them in December, 1915, and was just in time for the advance from Ali Gharbi. Shahbaz Khan came down to the depôt and dismissed his son with envious blessings. He had dyed his beard a bright red, and he carried himself with a youthful air, hoping that the Colonel might discover some subterfuge by which he could re-emerge on the active list. The Colonel would have given ten of his jiwans for him, and Shahbaz Khan knew it. But the rules were all against him. So the regiment went off to the accompaniment of the dhol and serinai, amidst many loud shouts and salutations, mingled with British cheers, and old Shahbaz Khan was left behind. He died in his bed before Shere Ali came back, and no doubt a brooding sense of having been born too soon hastened his end. Father and son, I have explained, were faithful to type. The Khattak is the Celt of the Indian Army, feckless, generous, improvident, mercurial, altogether a friendly and responsive person, but with the queer kink in him you get in all Pathans, that primitive sensitive point of honour or shame which puzzles the psychologist. It is often his duty to kill a man. On these occasions the ægis of the British Government is a positive misfortune. For the Khattaks are mainly a cis-frontier race, and therefore subject to all the injustice and inequalities of our law. Citizenship of the Empire hampers the blood feud. A stalking duel started in British territory generally ends in the Andamans or Paradise. If you lose you lose, and if you win you may be hanged or deported for life. Nevertheless, the instinct for honour survives this discouragement, and there is a genial colony of Khattak outlaws over the border.