“I think he may make his mind easy on that score.  The kingdom of Baithopoor is too inconveniently situated and too full of mosquitoes to attract the English.  Besides, there are more roses than rubies there just now.”

“True, and that question interests me closely, for the old man owes me a great deal of money.  It was I who pulled him through the last famine.”

“Not a very profitable investment, I should think.  Shall you ever see a rupee of that money again?”

“Yes; he will pay me; though I did not think so a week ago, or indeed yesterday.  I lent him the means of feeding his people and saving many of them from actual death by starvation, because there are so many Mussulmans among them, though the maharajah is a Hindoo.  As for him, he might starve to-morrow, the infidel hound; I would not give him a chowpatti or a mouthful of dal to keep his wretched old body alive.”

“Do I understand that this interview relates to the repayment of the moneys you have advanced?”

“Yes; though that is not the most interesting part of it.  He wanted to pay me in flesh—­human flesh, and he offered to make me a king into the bargain, if I would forgive him the debt.  The latter part of the proposal was purely visionary.  The promise to pay in so much humanity he is able to perform.  I have not made up my mind.”

I looked at Isaacs in utter astonishment.  What in the world could he mean?  Had the maharajah offered him some more wives—­creatures of peerless beauty and immense value?  No; I knew he would not hesitate now to refuse such a proposition.

“Will you please to explain what you mean by his paying you in man?” I asked.

“In two words.  The Maharajah of Baithopoor has in his possession a man.  Safely stowed away under a triple watch and carefully tended, this man awaits his fate as the maharajah may decide.  The English Government would pay an enormous sum for this man, but Baithopoor fears that they would ask awkward questions, and perhaps not believe the answers he would give them.  So, as he owes me a good deal, he thinks I might be induced to take his prisoner and realise him, so to speak; thus cancelling the debt, and saving him from the alternative of putting the man to death privately, or of going through dangerous negotiations with the Government.  Now this thing is perfectly feasible, and it depends upon me to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the proposition.  Do you see now?  It is a serious matter enough.”

“But the man—­who is he?  Why do the English want him so much?”

Isaacs pressed his horse close to mine, and looking round to see that the saice was a long way behind, he put his hand on my shoulder, and, leaning out of the saddle till his mouth almost touched my ear, he whispered quickly—­

“Shere Ali.”

“The devil, you say!” I ejaculated, surprised out of grammar and decorum by the startling news.  Persons who were in India in 1879 will not have forgotten the endless speculation caused by the disappearance of the Emir of Afghanistan, Shere Ali, in the spring of that year.  Defeated by the English at Ali Musjid and Peiwar, and believing his cause lost, he fled, no one knew whither; though there is reason to think that he might have returned to power and popularity among the Afghan tribes if he had presented himself after the murder of Cavagnari.