The child sat still for a little time and Miss Allardyce closed her eyes; the pain was nearly making her faint.  She was roused by Wee Willie Winkie tying up the reins on his pony’s neck and setting it free with a vicious cut of his whip that made it whicker.  The little animal headed towards the cantonments.

‘Oh, Winkie, what are you doing?’

‘Hush!’ said Wee Willie Winkie.  ’Vere’s a man coming—­one of’ve Bad Men.  I must stay wiv you.  My faver says a man must always look after a girl.  Jack will go home, and ven vey’ll come and look for us.  Vat’s why I let him go.’

Not one man but two or three had appeared from behind the rocks of the hills, and the heart of Wee Willie Winkie sank within him, for just in this manner were the Goblins wont to steal out and vex Curdie’s soul.  Thus had they played in Curdie’s garden—­he had seen the picture—­and thus had they frightened the Princess’s nurse.  He heard them talking to each other, and recognised with joy the bastard Pushto that he had picked up from one of his father’s grooms lately dismissed.  People who spoke that tongue could not be the Bad Men.  They were only natives after all.

They came up to the boulders on which Miss Allardyce’s horse had blundered.

Then rose from the rock Wee Willie Winkie, child of the Dominant Race, aged six and three-quarters, and said briefly and emphatically ‘Jao!’ The pony had crossed the river-bed.

The men laughed, and laughter from natives was the one thing Wee Willie Winkie could not tolerate.  He asked them what they wanted and why they did not depart.  Other men with most evil faces and crooked-stocked guns crept out of the shadows of the hills, till, soon, Wee Willie Winkie was face to face with an audience some twenty strong.  Miss Allardyce screamed.

‘Who are you?’ said one of the men.

’I am the Colonel Sahib’s son, and my order is that you go at once.  You black men are frightening the Miss Sahib.

One of you must run into cantonments and take the news that the Miss Sahib has hurt herself, and that the Colonel’s son is here with her.’

‘Put our feet into the trap?’ was the laughing reply.

‘Hear this boy’s speech!’

’Say that I sent you—­I, the Colonel’s son.  They will give you money.’

’What is the use of this talk?  Take up the child and the girl, and we can at least ask for the ransom.  Ours are the villages on the heights,’ said a voice in the background.

These were the Bad Men—­worse than Goblins—­and it needed all Wee Willie Winkie’s training to prevent him from bursting into tears.  But he felt that to cry before a native, excepting only his mother’s ayah, would be an infamy greater than any mutiny.  Moreover, he, as future Colonel of the 195th, had that grim regiment at his back.

‘Are you going to carry us away?’ said Wee Willie Winkie, very blanched and uncomfortable.