"Married a Scotchwoman?"

"Without doubt. Of a low caste--her father being a drunkard and landless
(though grandson of a Lord Sahib), living by horses and camels menially,
out-casted, a jail-bird. Formerly he had carried the mail through the
desert, a fine rider and brave man, but _sharab_[1] had loosened the
thigh in the saddle and palsied hand and eye. On hearing this news, the
Jam Saheb was exceeding wroth, for he had planned a good marriage for
his son, and he arranged that the woman should die if my father, on
whom be Peace, brought her to Mekran Kot. 'Tis but desert and mountain,
Sahib, with a few big _jagirs_[2] and some villages, a good fort, a
crumbling tower, and a town on the Caravan Road--but the Jam Saheb's
words are clearly heard and for many miles.

[1] Wine.
[2] Estates.

"Our father, however, was not so foolish as to bring the woman to his
home, for he knew that Pathan horse-dealers, camel-men, and traders
would have taken the truth, and more than the truth, concerning the
woman's social position to the gossips of Mekran Kot. And, apart from
the fact that her father was a drunkard, landless, a jail-bird,
out-casted by his caste-fellows, no father loves to see his son marry
with a woman of another community, nor with any woman but her with whose
father he has made his arrangements.

"So my father, bringing the fair woman, his wife, by ship to Karachi,
travelled by the _rêlwêy terain_ to Kot Ghazi and left her there in
India, where she would be safe. There he left her with her _butcha_,[3]