"It may be as you say, Chief of the Gularzai. It is long ago, and who can say for certain what happened then? If it be so, I deplore it. But you have cited the Koran. Hear now the words of the sacred revelation: `O true believers, the law of retaliation is ordained for the slain: the free shall die for the free, and the servant for the servant, and a woman for a woman: but he whom his brother shall forgive may be obliged to make satisfaction for what is just, and a fine shall be set on him, with humanity. This is indulgence from your Lord, and mercy.' Will ye not, therefore, forgive me, my brothers?" There was nothing abject in his tone, no suspicion of cringing. For a few moments his listeners stood as though thunderstruck. This unbeliever quoted glibly from the holy volume. Then the third of the trio, who had kept somewhat in the background and of whom Raynier had not taken much notice, spoke. "Feringhi, thou hast evidently studied the revelations of Mahomed--the blessed of Allah. Wilt thou not now make profession of the faith?" Here was a loophole. Raynier thought of what he had undergone, of how completely he was in the power of this unsparing and vengeful people; of the horrors he had witnessed, and of what might be in store for himself. He thought of Hilda Clive, and how life might hold out for him a long vista of its fairest and brightest, and the temptation was great. But he thought, too, on the opinions he had more than once expressed when discussing such "conversions," and how they were dishonouring to the British name. He was not an ostentatiously religious man, but when it came to forswearing Christianity, the line had to be drawn. So he answered,-- "I could not do that, for it would be to forswear myself. I honour your religion, but were I to profess it I should be speaking a lie." Now, while he said this, Raynier's eye had rested on something-- something that was in the hand of the man who had spoken last. _It was a malacca cane_. The blood rushed wildly through his being. He stared at the thing. There it was, a stout, silver-topped malacca cane--a very unwonted article in the hand of a white-clad, turbaned Gularzai. Heavens! what did it mean? He stared at the man who carried it--a tall, handsome, commanding-looking representative of his race--and then his mind rushed back from the stronghold of the Chief of the Gularzai, to the shouting, roaring, riotous mob in the heart of the city of London. And this was the man he had rescued from its uproarious violence. "Do you not remember me, brother?" he said, in English, his heart seeming to burst in the revulsion of returning hope. "That is the stick I armed you with when you were beset by numbers. Look! In the middle of it is the dent made by the falling iron which would otherwise have crushed your head in."