and a smile that would have melted snow on the distant peaks if
he had only looked the other way.

"Welcome, King sahib!" he laughed, with the air of a skilled fencer
who admires another, better one. "I shall know better another time
and let you keep in front of me! No more getting first into a train
and settling down for the night! It may not be easy to follow you,
and I suspect it isn't, but at least it jolly well can't be such
a job as leading you! I trust you had a comfortable journey?"

"Thanks," said King, shaking hands with him, and then turning away
to unlock the carriage doors that held his prisoners in. They were
baying now like wolves to be free, and they surged out, like wolves
from a cage, to clamor round the Rangar, pawing him and struggling
to be first to ask him questions.

"Nay, ye mountain people; nay!" he laughed. "I, too, am from the
plains! What do I know of your families or of your feuds? Am I
to be torn to pieces to make a meal?"

At that Ismail interfered, with the aid of an ash pick-handle,
chance-found beside the track.

"Hill-bastards!" he howled at them, beating at them as if they were
sheaves and his cudgel were a flail. "Sons of nameless mothers!
Forgotten of God! Shameless! Brood of the evil one! Hands off!"

King had to stop him, not that he feared trouble, for they did not
seem to resent either abuse or cudgeling in the least--and that
in itself was food for thought; but broken shoulders are no use