“But what if ye fail?” said the chief.  “Ye will be penned up in that Hunza valley like sheep, and I, Fazir Khan, shall be unable to unlock the door of that sheepfold.”

“We shall not fail.  This is no war of rock-pigeons, my brothers.  Our agents are in every town and village from Bardur to Lahore.  The frontier tribes, you among the rest, are rising in our favour.  There is nothing to stop us but isolated garrisons of Gurkhas and Pathans, with a few overworked English officers at their head.  In a week we shall command the north of India, and if we hold the north, in another week we shall hold Calcutta and Bombay.”

The chief nodded his head.  Such far-off schemes pleased his fancy, but only remotely touched his interest.  Calcutta was beyond his ken, but he knew Bardur and Gilgit.

“I have little love for the race,” he said.  “They hanged two of my servants who ventured too near the rifle-room, and they shot my son in the back when we raided the Chitralis.  If ye and your friends cross the border I will be with you.  But meantime, till that day, what is my duty?”

“To wait in patience, and above all things to let the garrisons alone.  If we stir up the hive in the valleys they may come and see things too soon for our success.  We must win by secrecy and surprise.  All is lost if we cannot reach the railway before the Punjab is stirring.”

The mullah had ceased muttering to himself.  He scrambled to his feet, shaking down his rags over his knees, a lean, crazy apparition of a man with deep-set, smouldering eyes.

“I will speak,” he cried.  “Ye listen to the man’s words and ye are silent, believing all things.  Ye are silent, my children, because ye know not.  But I am old and I have seen many things, and these are my words.  Ye speak of pushing out the English from the land.  Allah knows I love not the breed!  I spit upon it, I thirst for the heart of every man, woman, and child, that I might burn them in the sight of all of you.  But I have heard this talk before.  When I was a young priest at Kufaz, there was word of this pushing out of the foreigner, and I rejoiced, being unwise.  Then there was much fighting, and at the end more English came up the valleys and, before we knew, we were paying tribute.  Since then many of our people have gone down from the mountains with the same thought, and they have never returned.  Only the English and the troops have crept nearer.  Now this stranger talks of his Tsar and how an army will come through the passes, and foreigner will fight with foreigner.  This talk, too, I have heard.  Once there came a man with a red beard who spoke thus, and he went down to Bardur, and lo! our men told me that they saw him hanged there for a warning.  Let foreigner war on foreigner if they please, but what have we to do in the quarrel, my children?  Ye owe nothing to either.”

The stranger regarded the speaker with calm eyes of amusement.