train, suddenly came out with the information that the Pathans of Kalru had been seen constantly crossing and recrossing the ferry of the great river. Their reason for doing so was unknown to the old man, but the information that he had given led to further inquiries elsewhere, and finally it came out that the men of Kalru had been away among the independent tribes and had brought back with them, in small batches or one by one, arms of different kinds. Obviously this was a matter to be treated seriously, but by the time the fact had come to notice the stream of Kalru passengers across the mile wide ferry had ceased, and there was no one to be caught redhanded. The War was still in full swing, troops even in the garrison towns were fewer than ever in India, and there was little backing for the ordinary police if trouble arose owing to the example of Kalru being taken up by other villages. With the arms in their possession, even if nothing hostile to the British might, as represented by two white men, was likely to occur, robberies and dacoities might start, and once begun might lead to a great outbreak of crime. There seemed no chance of recovery of such arms by search within the village. Kalru, on the highest inhabitable spot below the steep Salt Range slopes, commanded every path of access, and a stranger could be seen for miles away.

The Head of the District puzzled over the problem, and finally decided to summon the five headmen of the village to appear before him. He did not make their visit to him an easy one, but fixed upon a date when he would be forty miles away from headquarters, across the river at the town of Sabzkiari. As often happened to litigants, their appearance before him was preluded by the tremendous tale of work already allotted to the day. On the day following he had to dispose of business two thousand feet up among the rugged Musazai Hills, and, tough as Kalru Pathans might be, the climb up the torrent bed to the plateau above was not attractive. When called in the afternoon, they were none too jaunty. However, on being taxed with having arms in the village, they stoutly denied one and all.

A holy shrine of some departed saint happened to be in existence near the site of the next camp a dozen miles away, and it seemed natural to invite them to repeat their asseverations of denial by the tomb of the saintly dead. It was equally not surprising that they were unprepared to repeat there the answers considered sufficient for secular authority. They had to admit that some of the villagers had indeed laid in a store of arms from the frontier. Their own share in the matter was not pressed, but they were asked for an explanation of this extraordinary conduct on the part of the villagers. The

keen-eyed men looked from one to the other, each scanning the aquiline features of his associate to get help in framing an answer. Finally the youngest blurted out

"The truth is, that we heard that Kings were fighting, and did not know what might be the result, so in case you English gave up the country I got a gun to shoot Fatteh Khan, and Fatteh Khan has got a gun to shoot me!"

It was at that very moment that bright politicians at home, on the strength of meeting a few Western educated Indians, were working out a system of Reforms which premised among other things that India was one united nation. Seventy years, however, is not long in the history of mankind, and there were many in the village of Kalru who had heard from their elders of the days before 1848 when Sikh fought with Sikh for supremacy after the death of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, and before that when the Sikhs fought in those parts with the Nawab of Dera Ismail Khan, and finally defeated him in the desert fort of Mankera. They knew, too, that the Nawab had not held sway for any great length of time, and that before him ruler after ruler had appeared and passed away, each after a very brief spell. The strength of the British Government does not loom very large in a District without a Cantonment, and although the initiated know that such strength far exceeds that of

any petty Maharajah or Nawab, the peasants in a village under the Salt Range saw no visible sign of its majesty.

However, the admission that arms had been imported into the village had now been made, and the next step was to obtain from the five headmen a joint list, compiled at the holy premises of the shrine, of such villagers as, all agreed, had imported arms. The village was divided into two main factions; two headmen belonged to one, and two to the other, while the fifth stood aloof from all quarrels. Consequently, while one party would have gladly lodged false accusations against some and left out the names of others, a list to which all agreed was likely to be accurate. Sitting in conclave, the five headmen produced a list of twenty-three names of those who had to their knowledge imported various arms, after which they were allowed to return to their homes. Then a Hindu Inspector of Police was sent to Kalru to call on the twenty-three persons to give up the arms under promise of non-prosecution, but the minds that could believe that when Kings were fighting the British would clear out of India were reluctant to believe in promises of forgiveness. They knew that in the past heavy sentences had been inflicted on individuals caught in illegal possession of arms. They assumed that any one who did produce a weapon would be immediately pounced upon and

put into jail. An attempt was made to put further pressure upon them by calling them into headquarters to show cause why they should not be put upon security to prevent a breach of the peace; but this also led to no result, and although the case was postponed from time to time in the hopes of their coming to reason, it was obvious that at the worst they could give security and return to their homes. It was not possible for authority to sit down under defeat, or leave the position as one of stalemate.

In the immediate neighbourhood of Hazratabad is the great blue-tiled shrine of the Saint Shah Masum. About a century before this holy man had found a resting-place near Hazratabad after years of wandering, in which he had become famous as one possessed of the gift of prophecy and the power of miracles. After his death his devoted disciples had built for him a mausoleum, in the neighbourhood of which his descendants had bred and multiplied. Inside the building many touching symbols of the power of belief are to be seen. Barren women come with toy cradles hoping for children; mothers bring gifts in return for the inestimable boon of male offspring! Little boys come to have the first hair shaved off. This, wrapped in the skin of a sacrificial goat, is buried as an atonement for the life of the child. Round the tomb hang bolsters signifying prayers or thanksgivings for

obtaining wives or mistresses; and cow-bells are suspended in the hopes of, or after, collecting lost or other people's cattle. The fame of his tomb is not surprising in view of the many wonders reputed to have been performed by him during his lifetime. As a prophet his fame was enhanced when, enraged at not being treated well by the Nawab of Dera Ismail Khan, he had foretold the fall of his great desert fort of Mankera. The Nawab had made light of the prophecy, secure in the aridity of the fort's surroundings, but the Sikhs systematically dug wells for their army, and thus advanced close enough to attack. Among his miracles he fed all the workers who constructed the great tank west of Hazratabad by the simple process of spreading his sheet over a thorny bush, under which later on platefuls of sweets and mutton were found. He shifted a wall by his word and endowed with life and clothed in flesh the dry bones of a sheep of which the meat had already been cooked and eaten.

With such wonders reputed to his credit, it is not surprising that the people of villages far and near became his devoted disciples. Some scoffed for a time, and among these were the people of Kalru, some rude wits among whom prepared to play a practical joke on him. When he went to their village, he was met by a mock funeral procession with parents and relatives following the bier wailing and

weeping. They asked the saint to read the funeral service, which he did. As he came to the end, the man on the bier should have risen up and confounded him, but when he was uncovered he was in very truth a corpse! From that time onwards Kalru did not hesitate in its allegiance.

Saints in the West were celibate, but those in the East were permitted to enter the bonds of matrimony, and it is not surprising that those who believed in their holiness and magical power considered that some portion of it was passed on to the descendants of the great ones. Among Shah Masum's grandchildren was one Mian Jamal, well known to the District Officer, because the leisure provided by the abundant funds presented by disciples enabled the inheritor of sanctity to indulge in the sporting proclivities dear to his heart. In this capacity he rode often with the Head of the District, and thus it was that his connection with Kalru became known to that perplexed official, who could not leave matters as they were, and, on the other hand, could not relax his efforts until the arms were recovered. The police had paid various visits to Kalru, and had even hunted about in the ravines and torrent beds of the neighbourhood, but all to no purpose.

Mian Jamal's connection with Kalru suggested that he might be of use on this occasion, and when approached he readily

agreed to co-operate. He had not known of the intention of his flock to lay in the arms, as he had been away on a sporting expedition after bustard and ravine deer in the distant desert. He was was anxious that they should be saved from any future harassment in the way of police investigations, and on the other hand he was delighted at the opportunity of showing how great his influence was among them. As a sensible man he was under no delusions as to the stability of the British power, and welcomed the chance of standing in well with authority. He went off on a visit to Kalru, and after a few days returned with the information that the villagers had been badly scared, and were very mistrustful of all minor Indian officials. Pathan-like, they had planted their feet, and nothing in the way of force could move them. The only solution was to rely upon their belief in the word of a British officer, and he suggested that if only the Head of the District would visit Kalru one evening absolutely alone, except for one private servant to cook his food and arrange his bedding, the villagers would lose their fear. Reassured in this way they would, in the absence of police or other minions, be prepared to put all the weapons in their possession into the dried tank of the village during the darkness of the night.

This was agreed to, and after a long ride the lone white man

ate his simple meal in a tiny rest-house, clear of the village, on the side of the great tank. He read for a long time by the light of his camp lantern and then went off to bed. Once his light was out sounds of much coming and going commenced. Fortunately it never occurred to the solitary official that wild men with arms might turn them against him. That sort of thing might happen in Bengal, where assassination is exalted by press and public men alike as the summit of bravery. There had, no doubt, been a case of a bomb found in the Sikh part of the Punjab as if it had been intended for some one of position, but then these misguided people had returned from China and America primed with the lie that the Central Punjab was theirs for the taking. Mian Jamal would naturally be responsible for his disciples, rude untutored Pathans though they might be. The night wore on, and the would-be sleeper's only wish was for the cessation of the constant clatter. When the larger groups had gone, there were still men passing and repassing in ones and twos. Silence fell at last, and all too soon after came the dawn. He rose and dressed to find Mian

Jamal, the headmen, and a crowd of onlookers ready to escort him to the tank.

There, as promised, were the arms, and the pile of them was a big one. It proved that he had been right to take the matter seriously. When, however, he went closer to examine the weapons, he could not refrain from laughter. The wonderful guns which had caused him so much concern were but a mass of gas-pipes! There were old muskets dating back to Sikh times, and Jezails made over the border, but long ago discarded by the frontier tribes in favour of modern weapons. There were matchlocks, flintlocks, and a couple of bellmouthed blunderbusses. Controlling his countenance, he thanked Mian Jamal gravely for his assistance, and bade the headmen complete the work by sending the arms on camels to headquarters. As he rode off he thought of the rashness of those at home who were proposing to weaken the central power in India, and of Ahmed Khan's words, symbolical of the internecine strife which might follow all over the country on their misguided efforts

"I got a gun to shoot Fatteh Khan, and Fatteh Khan got a gun to shoot me!"