showing no least symptom of surrender in the kind, strong lines of a
rugged face, stood, eyes upward, in the moonlight. The moon, at least,
looked cool. It was at the full, like a disk of silver, and he seemed
to drink in the beams that bathed him.

"Does he worship it?" wondered Ali Partab, reining from an amble to a
walk and watching half-reverently. The followers of Mohammed are most
superstitious about the moon. The feeling that he had for this man of
peace who could so gaze up at it was something very like respect, and,
with the twenty-second sense that soldiers have, he knew, without a
word spoken or a deed seen done, that this would be a wielder of cold
steel to be reckoned should he ever slough the robes of peace and take
it into his silvered head to fight. The Rajput, that respects decision
above all other virtues, perhaps because it is the one that he most
lacks, could sense firm, unshakable, quick-seized determination on the
instant.

Duncan McClean acknowledged the fierce-seeming stare with a salute, and
Ali Partab dismounted instantly. He who holds a trust from such as
Mahommed Gunga is polite in recognition of the trust. He leaned, then,
against the horse's withers, wondering how far he ought to let
politeness go and whether his honor bade him show contempt for the
Christian's creed.

"Is there any way, I wonder," asked the Scotsman, the clean-clipped
suspicion of Scots dialect betraying itself even through the
Hindustanee that he used, "of getting letters through to some small
station?"

"I know not," said the Rajput.