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83<br />
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR<br />
“Let those whom he serves attend to his wants, I cannot,” she said to<br />
herself, then took her little sobbing sister in her arms.<br />
“You can search wherever you like,” Halima was sa ying in her terror.<br />
“He is not here, we have not a corner where we could hide a mouse in.<br />
Such an inconvenient house. No place to put anything. My husband was<br />
here yesterday. He was here last night. He must have had a sudden call<br />
and gone off late; he cannot be far away, not further than the next<br />
village at most; he often goes there; or he may have joined some<br />
company among the hills. He never tells me where he goes. If any one<br />
could tell you it would be Gul Begum there; ask her, she knows if any<br />
one does.”<br />
“Where is the girl?” one of the soldiers asked roughly.<br />
“I am here,” she said quietly, from her corner. “What do you want with<br />
me?”<br />
“Where is your father?”<br />
“How can I tell?” Gul Begum asked truthfully enough. “He was here<br />
last night sleep ing in this ver y room with the eldest boy. When you<br />
knocked and made such a clatter, I came in here to see what you<br />
wanted, and found that the room was empty, neither my father nor<br />
brother were here. Doubtless they heard of your coming and escaped,”<br />
and then a sp irit of evil too possession of the girl. “Mohamed Jan,” she<br />
said, “says he has been in the shed all night watching our house. My<br />
father is a spirit that he can vanish into air. Ask him which direction he<br />
took. He must have seen him go. My father may have made it worth his<br />
while to keep silent. Mohamed Jan is a man who will take any master’s<br />
pay – ours as well as yours.”<br />
“That’s true, the traitor! Where is he? M y God, he shall smart for his.<br />
Here, lads, tie him up again, tie him to the post of yo n shed, and see<br />
what a hundred lashes will get out of him.”<br />
CHAPTER XVI<br />
A PRISONER!<br />
GUL BEGUM had made the suggestion regarding Mohamed Jan and the<br />
bribe he had possib ly received from her father, knowing perfectly well<br />
that, though undoubtedly a traitor to his country and capable of any<br />
conceivable crime, he was innocent on this particular occasion. She<br />
had said it without ever considering the consequences, in a moment of<br />
excitement and fury against the man who had not only wrecked her life,
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