Flora Annie Webster Steel

CHAPTER I

".... for I know

How far high failure overleaps the bounds

Of low successes--"

Lewis Morris.

The fortified town of AndijÂn lay hot in the spring sunshine. Outside the citadel, in the clover meadows which stretched from its gate to the Black-river (a tributary to the swift Jaxartes which flows through the kingdom of FerghÂna) a group of boys and men were playing leap-frog.

"An ushruffi he falls," cried one watching the leaper.

"A dirrhm he doesn't!" retorted another who had a broad, frank, good-natured face.

"There! He's done! I said so," continued the first not without satisfaction, for he was rival for championship.

"Not he!" asserted the second gleefully as the stumble was overborne by an extra effort. "Trust him and his luck! He wins! Babar wins!"

And Nevian foster-brother's voice was the loudest in acclaim as the frog-like figure with wide-spread legs, after successfully backing the long row of bent slaves arranged--with due regard to difficulty--adown the meadow-path, finally overtopped the last and with a "hull-lul-la la!" of triumph subsided incontinently into the white clover. And there it lay on its back gazing at the blue sky cheerfully.

It was that of rather a lanky boy; to western eyes a well-grown one of at least fifteen, with a promise of six feet and more of manhood in its long, loose-jointed limbs. But Babar, heir-apparent to this little kingdom of FerghÂna was only in his twelfth year. His face, nevertheless, was extraordinarily intent, with an intentness beyond his years, as he lay silent among the clover; for something had come between him and his game, between him and the work-a-day world. Something that came to him often with the sight of a wide stretch of blue sky, a narrow stretch of blue river, or even with the sight of a flower upon that river's brim.

How glorious! How splendid it was--this world in which he, forsooth, played leap-frog! The clover on which he lay, how sweet it smelt, how soft it was! It was just like a mantle of lambskin, covered as it was, till you could hardly see a speck of green, with its white, furry blobs of blossom.

A lambskin mantle!--that was a good description!

And the sky was like the turquoises that folk brought down from the higher hills in the summer when they were not weaving the purple cloth, which somehow always got mixed up in his mind with the pale blue. Why both recalled the multi-coloured tulips on the mountain slopes was a puzzle, except that one beauty recalled another. At that rate, however, memory in FerghÂna would be unending, for though it was, as everyone knew, situated on the extreme boundary of the habitable world, it was abundantly pleasant!

The lad's amber-tinted hazel eyes darkened as he ran over in his mind the excellencies of his native valley hidden away at the back of the Pamirs.

Its snow-clad hills clipping it on all sides save the west; its running streams; its violets--so sweet, but not piercing-sweet like a rose;--its profusion of fruits! Truly, that way they had over in the township of MarghinÂn of removing apricot stones and putting in chopped almonds instead was excellent indeed--

"Most Mighty!" came a voice breaking in on his thoughts. "There is news--bad news!"

The voice was breathless, yet full of concern, and Babar sprang to his feet, alert in a second. A messenger stood before him; one who had come far and fast. And in his hand was a blue kerchief; therefore he was a messenger of death.

Death? Incredible in this splendid joyful world! A sudden surge of resentful life-blood seemed to stop the boyish heart with its tumultuous claim for free passage.

"Well?" he asked thickly.

The answer came like a blow; dully, yet with stunning force.

"Your father, O King!"

His father! And he, Babar, was King! In the rush of realisation incredulity came uppermost.

"But how--?"

He stood there bare-headed, unbelieving, while the others crowded round to listen.

It was a simple enough tragedy. Omar-Shaikh, his father had been feeding his tumbler pigeons on the scarp of a precipice which overhung the steep ravine below the fort at Âkhsi. He had been watching them against the blue void, throwing golden grain to make them play their antics, when the ground had given way beneath his feet and he had been precipitated on to the river rocks beneath. That was all. The little group of listeners showed shocked faces, but Babar, even as he heard the tale with dismayed grief, seemed to see the fluttering white wings of the startled pigeons, to see the startled soul amongst them, taking its flight--

Whitherwards?--Gone!... Never to be seen again! Yet how clearly he saw him now ... short, stout, a bushy beard hiding a humorous mouth ... the turban without folds and with such long ends ... the tunic all over tight ... how often the strings had burst and how angry he had been at consequent childish gigglings ...

A sudden spasm of remorse for idle thoughts sent the son's memory back to his father's kindness ... a good sportsman too, though but a poor shot with the bow ... still with uncommon force in his fists--everyone he had ever hit had gone down before father's....

The last word brought memory of a still dearer tie.

"My mother?" asked the boy swiftly, "my mother? How--"

Then the real meaning of what he had heard came to him. He gave a little short, sharp cry and cast himself face downwards on the sweet-smelling white clover.

And all the joy of splendid life passed from him.

Nevian foster-brother who worshipped him, went over to him and crouched beside him.

"It is God's will, sire," he mumbled mechanically. "KwÂja KÂzi says so, and KwÂja KÂzi is a saint."

But saintship did not interest that young human heart, face to face for the first time with the deprivation of death.

Meanwhile those others, the bearded nobles and broad-faced courtiers who had crowded out at the news, looked at each other in doubt.

What had best be done? The times were troublous. Their new King was over-young. The King of Samarkand, the King of Tashkend, his paternal uncles, were already on the war-path. The former almost within striking distance; and this news of death would hasten, not retard.

In such case, might not refuge in the hills be wise? At any rate till KÂsim-Beg, most faithful of Governors, and Hassan-Yakoob, wiliest of advisers, could be recalled from the front?

But, while they still cogitated, Babar, who even at that age was not to be handled, rose suddenly, the tear-stains still on his sun-tanned cheeks. His voice, however, was firm.

"To horse, gentlemen!" he cried. "I go to secure my kingdom!"

He was on his lean-necked, goose-rumped Turkhestan mare Zulaikha almost before the words passed his lips, and ere two minutes had sped the low arched gateway of the city echoed and re-echoed to the hoofs of horses, as--the riders low bowed upon their saddles--they swept through in a stream of tails and tassels. So had it echoed many a time to the wild Turkhoman cavalry, since life in those days was one long war and rumour of war.

"My King!" said ShirÂm-TaghÂi spurring close as Barbar drew rein on the citadel terrace, and laying a detaining hand on his bridle. "That way lies death! Thine uncles mean evil! Come with us to the hills."

For an instant the boy hesitated and his eyes sought the distant blue of the mountains.

There, doubtless, lay safety--but what of that unknown quantity--kingship?

He had no ideals of it. He had not even been brought up to expect the chiefship. In those days succession was too uncertain for anticipation. But it was something now within his grasp. What if he lost it?

Still the faces around him were anxious and their owners were old; they had experience. And he was so young! How young none knew but himself. As this thought came he felt inclined to cry out-loud for his mother as in his heart he was crying for her loving care.

Then from the citadel came a running messenger to bid him enter without fear.

"It is a trick, Sire," protested ShirÂm-TaghÂi. "Safety lies with us."

And others echoed his words; so the lad wavered, uncertain, till an old man seated in the sunshine mumbling to himself, his long white beard wagging the while, spoke chance words that gave him the clue.

"Whatever happens is God's will, as the saints say."

Five minutes afterwards the young King knelt before KhwÂja KÂzi, the saint of his family, for his decision. He was a thin ascetic-looking man whose sunken eyes, hollowed by many fasts, hardened by much thought, but softened by the unshed tears of a lonely life, dipped critically into the clear, shadowless youth of the hazel ones and appraised the character of the young face with its fine-lipped mouth that tempered the strong square of the chin. And KhwÂja KÂzi knew the inside of the boy as well. He had watched him from birth; and lawyer and judge by profession, had accurately gauged the volatile, versatile vitality which would carry him triumphantly over all the obstacles in the leap-frog race of life. But he saw the dangers ahead also, and he loved the lad as his own soul; as indeed, despite all his faults, most people did love Babar in fortune and misfortune, in sickness and in health.

And the keen observer noticed how firmly the young hand closed over his scimitar-hilt. It was enough for one accustomed to weigh evidence and give verdicts.

"Draw thy sword, my son! and stand firm!"

The decree fell on glad ears. The boy was on his feet in a second and the war-shout of his race rang through the smoke-grimed old hall. Kingship lay before him.

As yet, however, the tragedy of death clouded his outlook. His dead father awaited burial at Âkshi, thirty miles distant; but ere he could start thitherwards many arrangements and new appointments had to be made. The novelty of power carried him far from thought. It was dream-like to be giving orders when but an hour before he had existed solely by the pleasure and permission of his father; as every other son in MoghulistÂn lived in those quaint old days.

It was dark, therefore, ere he and his galloping party stumbled over the stone causeways leading up to the high-perched citadel at Âkshi. Too late to disturb the women-folk, who, outworn by wailing, had gone to rest. But a little knot of long-robed physicians showed him the dead body of his father, lying ready for the funeral on an open bier in the Audience Hall. Babar had often seen death before, but never in this guise, with watchers and flaring torches and all the insignia of chiefship discarded, before the poor deserted shell of power.

It impressed his emotional nature vividly, and the mystery and the pity of it went with him to the dim royal room--so rough in its ancient royalty--where his father had been wont to sleep, and where the very touch of the royal quilts, surcharged with the personality of the cold dead in whose place he lived, seemed to burn in upon his young body and keep it awake. Not with concern or regret for things past, but with keen curiosity as to what was going to happen in the future to one Zahir-ud-din Mahomed commonly called Babar.

Lineal descendant of Timur the Earth Trembler; also of the Great Barbarian Ghengis Khan, was he to follow in their footsteps of conquest? Or would he be snuffed out at once by Uncle Ahmed of Samarkand? Wherefore, God knew, since he, Babar, had never done his uncle any harm. On the contrary; if he lived, he would have to marry that uncle's daughter Ayesha.... Here his vagrant thoughts wandered to remembrance of how sick he had been from overeating himself on sweets at the betrothal ceremonies;--that was his very earliest real recollection--when he was five years old.

Then there was Uncle Mahmud of Tashkend. Even in the dark the boy's cheek flushed at the mere remembrance of him; equally devoid of courage and modesty, of unbelieving disposition, keeping buffoons and scoundrels about him who enacted their scurvy and disgraceful tricks in the very face of the court, and even at public audiences!--of no outward appearance either, but all rough-hewn and speaking very ill ...

The lad, always unsparing of epithet, painted the portrait with remorseless hand. So his thoughts passed to MahmÛd's sons, his first cousins. He knew them well, but Masaud the eldest was a nincompoop, and as for BaisanghÂr? What was there that jarred at times in BaisanghÂr? BaisanghÂr who was so charming, so elegant, so clever, so sweet-tempered?

Here the lad's mind passed swiftly, without conscious cause, to his own sister, Dearest-One as he always called her; for he was given to caressing nicknames for those he loved. And he loved none better than the tall, straight girl, five years his senior, who hectored him and petted him by turns. But she ought really to get married; it was nonsense to say you preferred being a sainted Canoness!

BaisanghÂr did not say that, though, he, too, refused to marry. He said women were unnecessary evils. Was that true? Not that it mattered, since he, Babar, would have to marry, because he was King ...

King! Would it make him happier, he wondered? Could anyone be happier than he had been in this splendid world? Supposing it was to make him unhappy? Supposing it took the charm from life ...

The idle thoughts went on and on. He felt sleepy, yet he could not sleep. And by and by the glimmering oblong of the unglazed window kept him watching the slow growth of light.

Out on the hills, the still dawn must be stepping softly so as not to waken the world too soon ... soft, sandalled feet among the snow-set flowers....

The mere thought of it was sufficient to rouse him thoroughly. He rose, passed to the window, and thrust his young body into the chill air of dawn. All shadow! A deeper shadow in the valley, a lighter shadow in the encircling hills, and above it all the clear, grey, pellucid shadow of the sky.

Hark! That was the dawn cry of the wild fowl on the marsh and he held his breath to listen like the young Narcissus, while the whole joy of splendid life seemed to fill his world once more. He did not realise--few humans do--that he was but listening for the echo of himself; the self which came back to him from sights and sounds, that many a better man might have seen and heard unmoved.

So he waited and watched till the eastern sky showed pale primrose, and the unseen sun encarnadined the distant snows, and separated the white morning mists from the blue shadows of the hills.

It was a new day, and yonder over the brow of the road were pennons and lance-points. The tribesmen were coming to bury the dead, to do homage to the living.

It was a busy day, filled up with long-drawn, intricate ceremonial. Bare time for more than one tight clasp of tearless mother and tearless son, while that Dearest-One, his sister, stood by silent, the tear-stains still on her cheeks. But that did not matter; those three understood each other.

And old IsÂn-daulet, his maternal grandmother, had set emotion aside also, and, stern old disciplinarian as she was, had bidden him--in high staccato phrases which betrayed her effort to keep calm--take his father's place as bravely as he could.

And he did what he could, though it was a strain upon his twelve young years, for the long night had left him feverish and the long day with its need for initiative had outwearied him. So that when at last the ordeal was over, and he was free to seek the women's apartments for rest, his nerves were all a-rack, his pulse fast and irregular.

He found his grandmother alone by the big coal fire. Mother and sister, outwearied also, had gone to bed; the best place, the old lady said oracularly, for sore eyes and broken hearts. And Babar felt it was better so. The company of the stern-featured, soft-hearted old woman of whose sagacity and clear-sightedness he stood somewhat in awe, would be more bracing than the tears which must come sooner or later.

People said he was like his grandmother. Was he, he wondered, as he lay prone on the sheepskin rug watching the firelight on her fine old face.

"Tell me!" he said suddenly, "the tale of thy youth--of Jaimal and the lover who was slain."

But IsÂn-daulet, though she smiled, shook her wise old head.

"Nay, child! Such tales do to stir phlegm. They are not meet when the humours are already disturbed."

The boy leaned over on his elbows and looked up at her.

"Like cures like by comparison! 'Twould steady my pulse to know others throbbed. Feel mine, Grandam--how it beats!"

She took the thin, muscular wrist held out to her and appraised it judicially.

"I will give thee a purge the morrow's morn," she said shortly. "That will keep thy head cooler than idle tales; there is nothing for hot boy's blood like a purge."

Babar's face showed obstinate yet whimsical. "I will not take it, nanni, if thou wilt not tell--so there! And Kings are not to be coerced, see you, by black draughts, as mere boys are. And 'tis the first boon I have asked from thee--as I am."

The ring of almost apprehension in the last words was too much for the old woman, who loved the lad as the apple of her eye. She laid her hand caressingly on the boy's hair. It was cut, Florentine fashion, to the ears, and the ends, outsweeping in a gentle curve were sun-burned browner than the rest of the dark head.

"It is little to tell, sweetheart, save that it shows how even womanhood may confound strength by being resolute. It was not many years after my lord, your grandfather, married me in my father the KhÂn's tents upon the Steppes. He was a bold, brave man, was my lord, and like all bold, brave ones, he fought sometimes and won, and sometimes he fought and lost. 'No battle is ended save by Death,' remember that, O! Zahir-ud-din Mahomed! And once when he lost, his women--I was one--fell into the hands of Jaimal Shaikh, his enemy. And he--low-bred hound who knew not the first principles of politeness!--did not even keep me for himself!--I was not ill-looking in those days, my child--but sent me to his officer. I, the wife of Yunus KhÂn, ChagatÂi, of the house of Timur the Earth Trembler! Well! the fool came decked as for a bridal with blandishments and perfumes, and I welcomed him. Wherefore not? for the supper was good and he played on the lute passably. But when that was over, and we withdrew smiling to the inner room, my maids locked the door by my orders, stabbed the silly rake to death and flung his be-scented body through the window to the gutter. 'Twas its proper place."

The old voice which had gained strength and fire in the recital, dropped to cold, hard finality.

"And Jaimal Shaikh?" queried Babar unwilling to lose a word.

"He sent for me and I went. 'Why hast thou done this evil thing?' he asked. 'Because thou didst worse,' I answered. 'Because thou sentest me, the wife of a living man, to another's embrace. Therefore I slew him. Slay me also, if so it pleases thee.'

"But it did not please him. 'Take her to her husband's prison,' he said, 'and leave her there. They are one flesh indeed.' So I stopped with thy grandfather and comforted him until his star rose again. Now, get thee to thy bed, child, and see thou take the draught without demur. Remember 'God is no maker of the promise breaker.' 'Twill make thee feel sick, doubtless; but what matter if the result be good."

Babar made a wry face and laughed. "Thou hast done me more good with thy tale, revered one! Lo! I can see thy would-be lover in the gutter and my esteemed grandmother, all beautiful as a bride, peeking through the lattice for a glimpse of his corpse--"

"Go to thy bed, child," put in the old lady, delighted. "There be more than pictures for thy sight now; so may the Great Maker of Kings guard thee, his creature."

And that night Zahir-ud-din Mahomed commonly called Babar, forgot that he was King in sound, dreamless, boyish sleep.

CHAPTER II

"There's a sweet little cherub who sits up aloft To keep watch for the life of Poor Jack!"

In truth, Babar needed such a cherub in the first days of his King-ship, for KÂsim and Hussan, his two advisers, fell foul of one another. The former, bluff, honest, facetious, a pious, faithful, religious Moslem who carefully abstained from forbidden meats and drinks, and whose judgment and talents were uncommonly good though he could neither read nor write, was for the forward policy. Hussan, polished, active, a man of courage who wrote excellent verses and was remarkable for his skill in playing polo and leap-frog, was for diplomacy. And against these latter qualifications even honest KÂsim's ingenuous and elegant vein of wit could not stand.

At least in young Babar's judgment. Old IsÂn-daulet his grandmother was, however, of a different opinion, and even Dearest-One, his sister, ventured to rally him gently on his choice of Prime-minister.

"What," asked Babar hotly in reply, "is Hussan the worse for playing games? Is a man the worse for doing all things well?"

"Nay! but rather the better--so be it that they be men's things," she replied, going on imperturbably with the embroidery of a new pennon for her brother. It was green and violet, his favourite colours, and she was scrolling a text on it in crinkled gold. As she sat in the sunshine on the flat roof of the citadel, her bare head gleaming brown in the glare of light, her mourning garment of dark blue short in the sleeves and low at the neck showing her wheat-coloured skin, she was a pretty creature, though her nose was too long, her chin too short for real beauty: that lay in her eyes, amber-tinted like her brother's.

"Man's things! What be man's things?" argued Babar irritably. "Is cousin BaisanghÂr no man because he could help thee embroider two years agone?"

The princess held her head very high. It was not nice of her brother to import strange young men into the conversation, and distinctly mean of him to mention that old breach of etiquette. Had she not heard enough of it from her mother, ever since? Luckily grandam IsÂn-daulet, being desert-born, had not been so shocked, or life would have been unendurable. And as for BaisanghÂr! Everyone knew he was not at all a proper young man, though he was so charming, so sweet-tempered, so ...

"Lo! brother!" she said with asperity, checking her vagrant thoughts, "if one fool shook a baby's rattle better than another, he would be wise man to thee. But 'tis not I only who find leap-frog Hussan a smooth-tongued hypocrite. Grandmother has her eye on him."

"Then can no harm happen," said the boy-King cheerfully, rising, however, with suspicious alacrity as if to escape from the subject. In truth he was somewhat afraid of old IsÂn-daulet though he tried to minimise his awe by asserting that very few of her sex could equal her in sagacity!

Events, however, had marched with great rapidity, and Sultan Ahmed, his uncle, was now with his army but sixteen miles from AndijÂn.

So something must be settled. KÂsim was for defiance and defence, Hussan for diplomatic and dutiful submission; since the King of Samarkand was, ever, indubitably suzerain-lord of FerghÂna.

"Words against works," quoth honest KÂsim, who loved to be epigrammatic. His experience told him that if you fought fair you failed at times, but in the end you came out top dog in the general scrimmage of claims and clans.

"Nay!" retorted Hussan, "I desire diplomacy, not dare-devil disregard of common precautions."

Babar, however, frowned at both as he sat listening to the council of war or peace. He favoured neither pugnacity nor deceit.

"Look you, gentlemen," he said, frowning. "All admit my Uncle Ahmed to be a fool whom fools lead by the nose; but is that cause why I should treat him foolishly, and so disgrace myself? I will neither fight nor yield till I have made him understand how the matter lies. So, let a scribe be brought and I will indite him a letter."

"No letter ever did any good," grumbled illiterate KÂsim.

"Especially if it be not received nor read," suggested Hussan sardonically. "The King of Samarkand is supreme and may refuse aught but a personal interview."

KÂsim shot furious glances: such talk savoured to him of treason; but Babar only looked gravely from one adviser to the other.

"So be it," he said cheerfully. "If he refuse reception or understanding, then--if so it pleases God--I can defeat him at my leisure. Meanwhile write thus, O scribe!--with all proper titles, compliments and reverences--'I, Zahir-ud-din Mahomed Babar, rightful heir, and by acclaim (underline that, scribe!) of this Kingdom of FerghÂna, do with courtesy and reasonableness point out that it is plain that if you take this country you must place one of your servants in charge of it, since you reign at Samarkand. Now I am at once your servant and your son. Also I have a hereditary right to the government. If therefore you entrust me with this employment, your purpose will be attained in a far more easy and satisfactory way than by fighting and killing a number of people (and horses) needlessly. Wherefore I remain your loyal feudatory Zahir-ud-din Mahomed Babar.'"

He beamed round on the council for approval of this logical argument, then added hastily, "And, scrivener! put 'Zahir-ud-din Mahomed Babar' large; and 'King of FerghÂna' larger still at the very end. That will show him my intentions."

If it did, the effect was poor: for though the letter was duly engrossed on silk paper sprinkled with rose-essence and gold-dust, enclosed in a brocade bag, and sent to the invading camp at KÂba, the only answer to its irrefutable logic was a further advance of spear-points and pennons to within four miles of the citadel.

KÂsim was jubilant. Jocose and bellicose he routed out armouries for catapults, and kept long files of men busy in passing up stones from the river bed, while forage parties raided the bazaars for provisions.

If there was to be a defence it must be the longest on record, even if it were unsuccessful in the end.

Babar himself donned mail and corselet for the first time. But he discarded the latter soon; it made him, he said, feel like a trussed pheasant, and he preferred the wadded coatee which would turn most scimitar cuts. It made him look burly as he strode round the ramparts, so that the sentries smiled to themselves and felt a glow at the heart remembering how young he was.

The stoutness, resolution, and unanimity of his soldiers and subjects to fight to the last drop of their blood, the last gasp of their life, without yielding, filled the boy with unmixed admiration. It was part of the general splendidness of things which almost dazzled him.

"My younger troops display distinguished courage," he said gravely, and KÂsim hid a smile with difficulty as he replied, "They have youth in their favour, Most Excellent. It is a great gift."

Then he went out and roared over the joke on the ramparts to the sentries' huge delight. When next the young King went his rounds, smiles greeted him everywhere. He was a King to be proud of, and his family was worth fighting for--all of them! Especially the tall, slim figure with close-drawn veil which would often accompany the King at dusk. For Dearest-One was keenly interested in things militant, and was free to come and go, as the Turkhi women were, with due restrictions. And these were few in Babar's clan, which, as Grandmother IsÂn-daulet would boast, was "desert born."

But, after all, the preparations were unnecessary. The little cherub intervened, rather to the boy's chagrin, though he admitted piously that Providence in its perfect power and wisdom had brought certain events to pass which frustrated the enemies' designs, and made them return whence they came without success, and heartily repenting them of their attempt.

An exceedingly satisfactory but at the same time a disappointing end to his first chance of a real fine fight; and he watched one reverse after another overtake his foes on the other side of the Black-river with almost sympathetic eyes.

"There is a murrain amongst their horses now," reported the chief farrier one day, "my sister's son who is in service with the Samarkandis crept over last night to beg condiments for Prince BaisanghÂr's charger which is down--the same that the Most Excellent gave him three years agone."

"BaisanghÂr?" echoed Babar hurriedly. "I knew not that he was--amongst mine enemies!" Then he paused, and reason came to him. "Likely he is with his father of Tashkend who hovers on the edge of invasion, and hath ridden over--there is no harm in that. What didst give the fellow?"

The farrier laughed. "A flea in his ear, Most Clement! A likely story, indeed, that I should help our enemies."

Babar frowned and turned away. "'Twas a good horse, poor beast," he murmured. And afterwards, he went over to the women's quarters, and, as his wont was, retailed the story to those three, IsÂn-daulet, his mother and Dearest-One. The grim old Turkhoman lady was sympathetic about the horses, as a daughter of the Steppes must needs be, but stern over the necessities of war. His mother, more soft-hearted than ever by reason of her mourning, wept silently. But Dearest-One, was, as ever, a joy.

"I would bastinado the farrier," she said vindictively. "The poor brute; and then think of cousin BaisanghÂr. He loved the horse!"

Her beautiful eyes flashed and yet were melting, her long brown fingers gripped her embroidery closer yet more caressingly. Her brother sate and looked at her admiringly, yet with a certain diffidence. Sometimes Dearest-One went beyond him; she seemed to unfold wings and skim away into another world. And when he asked her whither she went, she would smile mysteriously and say:

"Thou wilt unfold thy wings also, some day, O little-big-one, and find a new world for thyself."

There was little leisure now, however, for aught but watch and ward. Any moment of the day or night might bring assault; but the days passed and none came. And then one morning broke and showed a smaller camp than had been on the low lying river bank the night before; there was a bustle, too, about the still-standing tent pegs, and with the first glint of sunlight one Dervish Mahomed TurkhÂu rode over the narrow bridge and demanded, on the part of his master, an audience with Hussan. Old KÂsim looked daggers, but there was no objecting. By virtue of his position as Prime-minister Hussan was the man to go, and he went. So out in the Place-of-Festivals beyond the gates, they met and parleyed: thus patching up a sort of peace, as Babar reported contemptuously to his faithful three. He was intensely disgusted and disappointed, while KÂsim looked sorrowfully at his piles of stones.

"They will do for next time," he said finally, cheering himself up with the remembrance that there were many other claimants to the throne of FerghÂna to be reckoned with besides Sultan Ahmed. And by evening most of the garrison had found solace for their disappointment in overeating themselves, after the disciplined rations which KÂsim-Beg, mindful of the possibility of a long siege, had already ordained; but Babar and his foster-brother Nevian were out all day on their little Turkhoman horses, chasing the white deer and shooting with their bows and arrows at a cock pheasant or two.

They brought home one in the evening which, as the boy boasted, was so fat, that four men could have dined on the stew of it!

"'Twill do for our dinner anyhow," said Babar's mother, and thereinafter she and IsÂn-daulet bullied cooks and scullions and gently quarrelled with each other for a good two hours over the proper family recipe for making "ishkÂnah."

And afterwards they sat together in an arched sort of balcony vestibule between the women's apartments and the men's rooms and talked happily, yet soberly of the future. Old IsÂn-daulet indeed, waxed prophetic. "See you, my sons-in-law will come to harm, not good. Ahmed has had to renounce his evil desires. MahmÛd will have to do the same; and let them pray God He send not punishment also." And she pursed up her thin lips and looked as if she knew something.

But the KhÂnum, Babar's mother, said little; her heart was still sad and she crept away early to her bed, followed after awhile by IsÂn-daulet, leaving stern injunctions on Dearest-One not to sit up over-long.

So brother and sister were left alone, and she went and sat beside him as he dangled his legs over the parapet of the balcony; for he dearly loved looking down from a height. It was to be a dark night so he could see little even of the roofs below, or the slabs of stone let into the wall at intervals to form a sort of ladder by which a bold man could climb from one to the other. And beyond, all was shadow, darker in some places than others. Besprinkled too with stars: the moving star or two of a lantern in the earth-shadow, but in the sky those changeless, changeful beacons, those twinkling tireless stars, motionless in their constellations, yet ever moving on and on ...

Round what?...

"Look!" he cried suddenly, "the scimitar of the Warrior is sheathed in the hills--my hills!"--

And it was so. Orion shone to the north, setting slowly behind the mighty rampart of shadowed mountains in which the starry sword was already hidden.

They sat silent for a little while, hand in hand, like the children that they were. And then suddenly a noise below them, made Babar swing his legs to the ground and stand firm before his sister.

"Who goes?" he asked and his voice rang through the darkness; but no answer came.

"'Twas a falling stone, methinks," said his sister carelessly; yet even as she spoke she also sprang to her feet, every atom of her, soul and body alert for something, she scarce knew what.

She knew, however, in a second, for a darker shadow showed vaguely at the end of the balcony, vaulted lightly over the parapet, and a pleasant voice said gaily--

"Mirza BaisanghÂr of the House of Timur, cousin to the King of FerghÂna, at your service."

"BaisanghÂr!" echoed Babar. "How camest thou?--" then, even in his confusion remembering, as he generally did, les convenances for others he added: "Thou hadst best retire, my sister, after making thy appropriate salutation."

So, for one second the girl's eyes straining through the starlight could see her cousin. A charming figure truly! Not dressed, like her brother, in country clothes, but in the silks and satins of the town. A dainty figure too, of middle height and slender make, yet manly withal. The round face, unlike the faces of his cousins, showing Turkhoman descent unmistakably, yet with such indescribable attractiveness.

"May the Peace of the Most High be upon you, my cousin," she said softly and her voice fluttered.

"And may His Peace remain with you, fair lady," he replied gravely, with the finest of Court salutes. That was all; then she withdrew and the shadows hid her going.

"By my soul, BaisanghÂr," said Babar joyously, when he had seated himself and his cousin side by side among the cushions, "I am utterly rejoiced to see thee again; though how, or wherefore thou camest--"

Prince BaisanghÂr interrupted him with a light laugh. "How, sayest thou? By the roof of course; have I not been in AndijÂn before? and did I not once climb hitherwards--but of that, no more! Only thou wilt have to set thy masons to work, coz; for by God's truth my foothold was but rotten more than once. Sure I must be born to the bowstring since sudden death will not have me elseways! Yet of all seriousness, I came nigh to being dashed to pieces. And as for wherefore? Sure I came in duty bound to thank my kingly cousin for his courteous gift of horse-medicine. Aye! and for my horse too--for the second time--since, thanks to the drugs, he is alive and kicking."

Babar sat back. "Horse-medicines?" he echoed. "What horse-medicine?--I sent thee none."

BaisanghÂr turned his head instantly to the darkness, and his voice rose perceptibly. "Yet it came from thee, my cousin," he replied blandly, "with thy salutations. In a packet of silken paper--such as ladies use for their trinkets, and tied with crinkled gold-thread such as ladies use--"

"Yea! it was I, Mirza BaisanghÂr," came a voice from the darkness; a voice clear, unabashed. "I sent it--I, the Princess Royal, so there is no need for fine wit to beat about the bush. I sent it, because--because my brother the King gave thee the horse and I was loth--loth it should die."

The voice trailed away faintly, and Mirza BaisanghÂr's eyes brimmed over with soft mirth; while Babar, forgetful of all save outraged etiquette, said sternly:

"Sister! and I told thee to go."

"And I went," retorted the voice rebelliously, "so far as eyesight goes. None can see me and 'tis the woman's right to listen."

Prince BaisanghÂr laughed aloud. "By the prophet! she speaks truth, coz; ladies have the law of listening all over the world; aye! and of speaking too. So let be, since we are cousins and free-born ChagatÂi of the house of Ghengis."

But Babar stickled. "Aye, we are; but thou art not--not on thy mother's side."

"My mother!" echoed BaisanghÂr, his voice full of amusement. "Lo! I admit it! On my mother's side I am beyond salvation, being of the wild Horde-of-Black-Sheep! for which may God forgive me since 'tis not my fault I was not born a White-Lamb!" He named the two great divisions of his Turkhoman ancestry with infinite zest, then went on lightly: "But I fail of myself in other ways--many of them. I made an ode concerning it, a while past, that sets BaisanghÂr Black-Sheep-Prince forth to a nicety!" and he began airily to hum a tune.

"Sing it to us, cousin," came that sweet voice from the darkness.

There was a moment of silence, as if the hearer were startled, perhaps touched; then came the almost stiff reply:

"My fair cousin is too kind. The ode as verse is nothing worth. And its subject is, beyond belief--bad! Still, since she is Princess-Royal and I am but her slave, the order is obeyed."

So through the night and out into the stars his high tenor voice rose and trilled in minor quavers.

first and third stanzas

second stanza

1. Some-times with pi-ous-ness I crawl
To-wards High Heav'n on whit-ed wall

2. Or rest a-while on tree or flow'r
And dream but on-ly for an hour.

3. Back to the dust and dirt I fly
Where un-sub-stan-tial shad-ows lie.

The quavers ceased, and there was silence from the darkness; but Babar's boyish voice rose cheerful as ever.

"'Tis good, cousin, and, in a measure, true. Yet need it not be so, surely. Thou hast no lack of parts. Who is more accomplished, of more pleasant disposition or more charming manners?"

"I came not hitherto to be catalogued for sale," interrupted BaisanghÂr curtly. "Of a truth I am admirable. I sing, I dance, I paint--yea! I paint uncommon--I could paint one fair lady's portrait could I but see her--"

Still there was silence from the shadows, and a frown came to the laughter-loving face. "But I waste time," he continued, "and I have much to say, for thine ear alone."

He spoke to the darkness, and he waited, his face softening while a whispering sound as of light departing feet rose for a space then died away in the distance.

It was a good half hour afterwards that Mirza BaisanghÂr, who knew his way well about the palace at AndijÂn, came with buoyant step down the spiral stairs which ended in a narrow vaulted passage that led to the sally-port.

His cousin, from whom he had parted most affectionately, had given him the pass-word, so, secure from molestation, he was carelessly humming the refrain of his own ode ...

"Back to the dirt and dust I fly
Where unsubstantial shadows lie."

The light-hearted, cynical words echoed along the arches and on them rose a curious sound, half cry, half sob, followed by a torrent of hot denial.

"It is a lie! It is not true and thou knowest it. Why shouldest thou say such things of thyself, O BaisanghÂr?--they--they--hurt!"

The young man stood still as if turned to stone.

"Dearest-One," he whispered at last, using the familiar name he was accustomed to hear--"Dost really care--so much?--And I--" he paused and a mirthless laugh rang false upon the darkness--"Princess--I cannot even thank thee--I--I dare not--save for the horse-medicines--" Here the artificial note left his voice and with a sudden cry "If I could--if I could, beloved," his eager hands went out and found what they sought, a lithe, warm, young body ready to his arms. But almost ere he clasped it he thrust it from him roughly.

"Go!" he said briefly. "Go, girl--and forget me--if thou canst. Yet remember this--if ever woman's lips touch mine, they would be yours--but that will be never--never!"

The next instant he was gone. Dearest-One stood, straining her eyes unavailingly into the darkness for a space: then she cowered down in on herself and sat shivering, her wide eyes open, fixed. But there was nothing to be seen in her heaven or earth: nothing to be realised, save that he would not even touch her.

CHAPTER III

"Draw near, O Man! and lift thy dreamy eyes.
See! this the ball; this the arena too
Where, mounted on the steed of Love, the prize
Is to be won by him who--God in view--
Strikes skilfully.
The Goal is distant; narrow too the Field;
Yet strike with freedom. God will send the Ball
Thy hand as sped in faith, where it should fall.
Backwards and forward strike and if thou yield
Yield cheerfully."

Grandmother IsÂn-daulet proved true prophet. Ere forty days had passed from that patched up peace, another hasty messenger bearing a blue 'kerchief of death had arrived at Âkshi whither the court had gone to celebrate the late king's obsequies. Ahmed, the King of Samarkand had been seized with a burning fever and after six days had departed from this transitory world.

Babar was sorry. His uncle, he said, had been better than most. A plain, honest Turk not favoured by genius, who had never omitted the five daily prayers except when honestly drunk. And that was but seldom, seeing that when he did take to drinking wine, he drank without intermission for a month or six weeks at a stretch and thereinafter would be sober for a considerable time. So there had always been periods for piety.

The womenkind wept, of course, for blood feuds enhanced blood relationships when Death the peace bringer stepped in between the combatants. Besides, mourning was already afoot; so they could kill two birds with one stone. Even FÂtima Begum, the late King's first wife, who, losing her premier position through childlessness had retreated in a huff to a separate establishment, joined in the chorus of wailing. And she brought her belated son JahÂngir--nigh three years younger than Babar--to take his rightful place in the palace; much to old IsÂn-daulet's indignation.

"Set her up, indeed," she said with a toss of her head, "her and her belated brat. Mark my words, had the child been lawful, 'twould have come betimes. But when 'tis hoighty-toighty and a separate house, only God knows to what an honest man may be made father."

Still the function was a function, and the ladies enjoyed all the ceremonies; for they were simple folk, content with little, and that little rough and rude, for all they were Queens and Princesses.

Babar, however, wearied of all save the giving of victuals to the poor. He loved to see joy at a portion of pillau and butter cakes. Indeed he surreptitiously ordered more sugar for the children's thick milk. It made him feel hungry, he said, to see them eat it. And there was no better enjoyment in the world than real hunger; provided always that food was in prospect. For he was tender-hearted over frail humanity. He could not see, for instance, why the Black-eyed Princess, his father's last and low-born wife who was, of course, quite beyond the circle of distinction, should not be allowed, if it pleased her, to discover a roundabout relationship to the family of Timur. It did not alter facts. But IsÂn-daulet sniffed.

"'Twill not alter her manners or her speech anyhow; though 'tis true in a way. We be all descended from Adam, as I tell her morn, noon, and night."

So Babar had to listen to the Black-eyed one's wails; which he did in kindly kingly fashion, for he liked the good-natured, stupid, pretty creature. He had, however, other things to think of. His Uncle Ahmed's death had vaguely disturbed him; for Uncle Ahmed left no male heirs; and the question of succession was a burning one, since, by all the laws of MoghulistÂn, Babar had a double claim to the throne through his maternal grandfather Yunus KhÂn.

"Of a surety," he said to Dearest-One who was ever confidante of his ambitions and innermost thoughts, "there is no doubt that, now, Uncle MahmÛd, as brother, succeeds of right. But at his death? Cousin Masaud and Cousin BaisanghÂr are not so close to Yunus KhÂn as I. Then Masaud is a nincompoop, and BaisanghÂr--" he paused.

"Well! what of Cousin BaisanghÂr?" asked the girl hotly.

Babar whittled away with his knife at the arrow he was making--for he was ever useful with his hands--ere he replied slowly:

"BaisanghÂr will never make a king. Wherefore I know not; but there it is. He is not fit for it."

Dearest-One was aflame in a second. "Not fit for it?" she echoed. "That is not true. He is as fit for it really as--as thou art, brother. Only he will belittle himself! He will talk of himself as a shadow--an unsubstantial shadow! It is not true, it is not right, it is not fair, and so I told him the other night."

Babar put down his knife and stared.

"Thou didst tell him so--but when?"

Dearest-One hung her head, though a faint smile showed on her face. She had given herself away; but she was not in the least afraid of her brother. Many youngsters of his age might, from their own experiences in love affairs, have been seriously disturbed at the idea of their sister speaking to a young man on a dark stair; but Babar was an innocent child. To him it would be but a slight breach of decorum. Yet something made her breath short as she replied coolly:

"I met him on the stairs. It was dark, so he could not see me, brother; and I spoke to him as--as a mother to her son." The head went down a little more over the last words; true as they were in one sense, she knew better in her heart-of-hearts.

"And he--what said he?" asked Babar alertly, taking his sister completely by surprise. With the memory of that cry "Beloved! beloved!" in her mind--it had lingered there day and night--she faltered.

"Dearest-One!" said the boy, grave, open-eyed, after a pause, "did he kiss thee?"

The girl looked up indignantly, a dark flush under her wheat-coloured skin. "Kiss me?" she echoed--"he did not even really touch me--"

And then, suddenly, she hid her face in her hands and burst into tears. True--he had not touched her--he had shrunk from her eager body. Why? oh, why?--

Babar was full of concern. He laid down his knife and arrow, and went over to his sister. "Then there is nothing to weep about, see you," he said stoutly, "save lack of manners, and for that thou art sorry. Is it not so, dearest?"

The girl's sobs changed to a half-hysterical giggle. "So sorry--" she assented, "and thou wilt not tell Grandmother--"

"The prophet forbid!" cried her brother aghast; "I should never hear the last of it."

And Dearest-One's tears changed to real laughter.

"Brother," she cried, "thou art the dearest darling of all! I would do aught in the whole world for thee."

"Nay," replied Babar gravely, "that will I never ask of thee. My womenkind shall have no task to do that my hands cannot compass alone."

He felt virtuous as he spoke; rather uplifted, too, by that same virtue. He did not know what Fate held in store for him. He did not dream that he would have to ask of her the greatest sacrifice a woman can make, and that she would make it willingly.

Meanwhile it was gorgeous summer tide, and Hussan played forward in the King's game of polo, down in the river meadows. He was the best of forwards; the best of men consequently to the boy-King.

"Thou art a young fool, child!" said old IsÂn-daulet who never minced her words, "as thou wilt surely find out ere long unless God made thee stupid blind. Luckily mine eyes are open; so go thy way and knock balls about after the manner of men."

Thus it was early autumn ere Babar's eyes opened; but then what he saw made his young blood surge through him from head to foot. The meanness, the deceit of it! To conspire with the ambassador from wicked Uncle MahmÛd at Samarkand who had come ostensibly to present an offering of silver almonds and golden pistachio nuts, to depose him, Babar, and put "the brat" JahÂngir on the throne. And all the while to be playing forward in the King's game! It was too much! It was not fair! It was emphatically not the game!

"Throw away bad butter while it's melted," said IsÂn-daulet firmly; "Send KÂsim-Beg and other trustworthy friends to strangle him with a bow string! Then wilt thou be quit of such devils' spawn."

But Babar was a sportsman. Even if it came to killing the forward in the King's game, he was not going to do it underhand. So he looked round the assembly of loyalists who had met to convince him in his grandmother's apartments in the stone fort, and said briefly: "To horse, gentlemen! I go to dismiss my Prime-minister from his appointment."

But that gentleman had already dismissed himself. When they arrived at the citadel, they found he had gone hunting; and from that expedition he never returned. Someone must have blabbed; for he had posted off to Samarkand, rather to the boy-King's relief. It would have been a terrible thing to imprison or blind the best forward in the kingdom.

And even when news came that the offender had paused by the way to make an attack on Âkshi, and in the consequent mÊlÉe, having been wounded in the hinder parts by an arrow from his own men, had been unable to escape and so had fallen a victim to the loyalists the boy-King was glad that Providence had taken judgment from his hands. Hussan had but himself to thank. As the poet said:

"Who does an evil deed
But sows the seed
Of his own meed."

This was finely philosophic; but it did not quite comfort the philosopher. The first actual experience of ingratitude and disloyalty made its mark upon him and sobered him. He began to abstain from forbidden and dubious meats and but seldom omitted his midnight prayers.

Mercifully, however, the season for polo was past, and Nevian GokultÂsh was almost as good at leap-frog as the deceased statesman. Nevian GokultÂsh, who, as foster brother, was above the possibility of suspicion.

"Truly," said Babar one evening, throwing his arm round his playmate's neck affectionately, "rightly are thy kind named GokultÂsh--'heart of stone.' Thy love is founded on rock, whereas my brother by blood--" he broke off impatiently--"but there! 'tis not his fault--he is so young--two whole years younger than I."

Despite the good-natured excuse which in all his chequered life, ever came easily to Babar's kindly nature, he felt the first chill of the cold world at his heart. He found to his great irritation and annoyance, that his milieu was not nearly so reasonable as he was himself. It was the irritation and the annoyance which besets capability and vitality. Other folk had not nearly such good memories, were not half so nimble-minded, or straight-forward, as he expected.

When, for instance, he sent an envoy to a rebellious chief, in order to remonstrate with him, before proceeding to arms, the wrong-headed man, instead of returning a suitable answer, ordered the ambassador to be put to death.

Such, however, not being in the pleasures of God, the envoy managed to escape, and after having endured a thousand distresses and hardships, arrived naked and on foot, to pour the tale of his wrongs into Babar's indignant ears. Urged by wrath at such ill-manners, the boy-King proposed instant reprisals, and set off; but a heavy fall of snow on the encircling hills and a slight sprinkling on the clover meadows warned him that winter was approaching, and his nobles added their opinion, that it was no time in which to commence a campaign.

So he returned to AndijÂn and to a boy's life of study and sport. The saintly KÂzi was his tutor, and kept the boy to his Al-jabr (algebra) and Arabic, and abstruse dialectic dissertations on the nature of the Kosmos. There were not many books to be read in AndijÂn, but Babar knew them all. He had the Epic of Kings almost by heart, and used to regret there were not more details about the great Jamsheed with his wonderful divining cup; Jamsheed who reigned with might, whom the birds, and beasts, and fairies, and demons obeyed; Jamsheed of whom it was written "and the world was happier for his sake and he too was glad." That was something like a King!

And Babar learnt also, in a rude, unrefined way, all the accomplishments of a Turkhi nobleman. He could strum on the lute, bawl a song fairly, and play with singlestick to admiration. The latter was KÂsim's care; KÂsim who was the best swordsman in the kingdom and who used to quarrel with the KÂzi as to whether the young student's strongest point was fencing, or the fine nastalik hand-writing in which Babar excelled.

As for sport, the snow falling early brought the deer down to the valleys; and the undulating country about AndijÂn was always full of wild fowl, while pheasants by the score were to be shot in the skirts of the mountains.

The boy was growing fast and in his lambskin coat worn with the fleece inside, the soft tanned shammy leather without all encrusted by gold-silk embroidery to a supple strength that kept out both cold and sabre cuts, he looked quite a young man; and his high peaked cap of black astrachan to match the edgings of his coat and bound with crimson velvet suited his bright animated face.

Dearest-One admired him hugely.

"I would the court painter were not a fool," she said regretfully as he came in one day from the chase and held up for her inspection a cock minÂwul pheasant all resplendent in its winter plumage. "But he cannot see. When he paints thee he makes thee all as one with Timur ShÂh and Ghengis KhÂn--on whom be peace--but I want thee."

In truth it needed a better artist than AndijÂn held to do justice to the fire which always leapt to the boy's face when beauty such as the iridescent bird's struck a spark from his imagination and made the whole world blaze into sudden splendour.

"BaisanghÂr might do it likely," replied Babar thoughtlessly; "he hath a quaint turn with his brush that is not as others; and he said he would love to paint thy portrait--" he broke off suddenly, aware that this was a subject which had better not have been introduced. But, indeed, there seemed a fate that he should always talk of BaisanghÂr to his sister. Could it be her fault? He looked at her with boyish reproach, but the girl's face was lit up with smiles and dimples.

"Aye! he said that. Did he say more after I had gone? Tell me, brotherling."

But he walked off in dignified fashion with the cock pheasant. His sister thought too much of BaisanghÂr. And it was time she married.

He talked to his mother quite seriously about it, and she met his anxiety by the calm remark:

"Why should she not marry BaisanghÂr?"

Why not, indeed, now he came to think of it. Somehow it had not occurred to him before. But when he suggested it to his sister she met him with a storm of tears. She was never going to marry. She was going to be a sainted canoness and pray for her brother. Why could he not leave her alone; and Cousin BaisanghÂr also, who apparently was of the same mind, since, though he was nigh nineteen, he had never taken a wife. And, if it came to weddings, was it not high time that he, Babar, King of FerghÂna, bethought himself of bringing his betrothed home? That would procure festivities enow, if that was what he was wanting.

From which deft shaft in the enemy's camp, Babar fled precipitately. The very idea irked him; he had no time for such nonsense. In fact he wearied even of the three loving women who insisted upon consulting him by day and by night.

But ere the winter was over yet another messenger of death arrived, and this one made the boy-King feel like a caged young eagle longing for his first flight.

Wicked Uncle MahmÛd after disgusting Samarkand for six months with his unbridled licentiousness and tyranny, until great and small, rich and poor, lifted up their heads to heaven in supplications for redress, and burst out into curses and imprecations on the Mirza's head, had, by the judgment that attends on such crime, tyranny, and wickedness, died miserably after an illness of six days.

The women wept, of course, though old IsÂn-daulet's tears were considerably tempered by smiles at her own prophetic powers. Had she not said that both the men who dared to attack the apple of her eye, young Babar, would suffer? And so they had. And now ...

The old lips pursed themselves and were silent. But the old thoughts were busy. Her grandson was, mayhap, over young to try his luck this year, yet for all that he was the rightful heir to the throne of Samarkand. In this way: Father Yunus KhÂn, Suzerain of all MoghulistÂn, had been suzerain also of Samarkand. None questioned that. Had not the triple marriage of Yunus KhÂn's three daughters with the King of Samarkand's three sons been arranged especially in order to put an end to the KhÂn of MoghulistÂn's undoubted claim, by joining the two families? Well, one of those marriages had produced no son. MahmÛd who had married the younger daughter, had but one son by her, a perfect child. But Babar, son of the eldest sister, was adolescent; therefore, by every right, every claim, he was the heir.

But she was a wise old woman. There was no use being in a hurry. Samarkand might as well seethe in its own sedition for awhile. By all accounts the TurkhÂns were up in arms; and the TurkhÂns were ticklish folk to deal with. Then Khosrau ShÂh, the late King's prime-minister was an able man and might be trusted to fight for what he wanted. The time for intervention would be when the combatants had weakened each other.

And the shrewd old woman once more proved herself right. For Khosrau ShÂh, having plumped for the nincompoop Masaud--doubtless because he knew that with a nonentity on the throne, his power would be absolute--the TurkhÂns declared for BaisanghÂr, sent for him express, and having driven out Khosrau, who had attempted to conceal his master's death until his plans were completed, placed the former on the throne.

And here another factor came in to the wary old woman's mind. What if her granddaughter were to marry BaisanghÂr? Babar could lay claim to other kingdoms when he was fit to fight for them, and thus there would be a down-sitting for both her daughter's children. So, most of the affairs of importance at AndijÂn being conducted by her advice, KÂsim's swashbuckler instincts were held in check for the time. Something however must be done to occupy the lad meanwhile; and the news that his uncle by marriage and cousin by descent, Hussain, King of KhorasÂn, meditated an expedition against HissÂr, the neighbouring province, prompted the suggestion that the boy-King should take advantage of proximity to pay his respects and make acquaintance with the premier prince of the age.

Babar's imagination was aflame in an instant. Tales of the splendid court at HerÂt were broadcast in Asia. Folk said they had even spread to Europe--that dim unknown horizon to which the boy's thoughts often reverted. And Sultan Hussain was as his father and his elder brother. It was always wise to make the personal acquaintance of such; it dispelled misunderstanding on their part, and gained for yourself a nearer and better idea of their strength and weakness.

So one day at the beginning of winter, with stout KÂsim wrapped to the eyes in furs and a hundred-and-a-half or so of hardy troopers equipped for a mountain march, Babar started for the low passes by the White Hills to the valley of the Oxus river.

"Have a care of thy soul, my son," said the saintly KwÂja, "and remember what the poet sings:

"The soul is the only thing to prize;
Heed not the body: it is not wise.
The wiles of the Devil are millionfold,
And every spell is a fetter to hold.
Thou hast five robbers to keep at bay,
Hearing and sight, touch, taste and smell,
So chain them up and govern them well.
Some things are real and some but seem;
The mundane things of the world are a dream."

But IsÂn-daulet sniffed. "So be it that he keep the institutes of Ghengis KhÂn as his forebears did, he will do. They be enough for a brave man, and death or the bastinado sufficient punishment."

The KwÂja looked grave. "Yet be they not the law of IslÂm, sister; and we, of the faith, are not heathens."

"Heathen or no!" retorted the old lady, "my grandson will do well if he touch Ghengis KhÂn's height." And she sniffed again.

Perhaps her words put it into the boy's head, but in this, his first flight beyond his hill-clipped kingdom his thoughts were with his great ancestors. He rather swaggered it in consequence round the camp fires at night, and was overbold in the chase; so that more than once on the higher hills Nevian-GokultÂsh had to pick him out of a snow-drift. But his dignity was always equal to the occasion, and when at last Sultan Hussain Mirza's camp showed in ordered array on the low ground beyond the passes, he took it as if he were quite accustomed to see the large pavilions, the rows on rows of orderly tents, the laagers of chained carts.

He held his head very high too, as he rode down the central alley, his pennant carried before him by two jostling troopers. The smart soldiers, lavish of buckles and broideries, who lounged about, smiled at the uncouth troop; but each and all had a need of praise for the boyish leader who sat his horse like a centaur and whose bright eyes seemed everywhere.

"He is a gay enough young cockerel," admitted a scented noble with a smile. "Let us see if his uncle will make him fight."

But even if Babar had been more pugnacious than he was, sheer astonishment at his first interview would have kept him quiescent. Even KÂsim-Beg, stickler as he was for etiquette, gave up the hopeless attempt at ceremonial.

"Thou art welcome, nephew," said the old man whose long white beard contrasted with his gay-coloured, juvenile garments, that better matched the vivacity of the straight narrow eyes. The black astrachan cap perched on the reverend head, however, suited neither. "Sit ye down, boy, and watch my butting rams! Yonder is the Earth Trembler--peace be on my ancestor's grave ... and this is the Barbarian Ghengis--no offence meant to thine, young ChagatÂi! Three tumans of gold, MuzÀffar, he smashes the other's horn first butt!"

The man he addressed, who had been, Heaven knows why, prime favourite for years, and showed his position by the most arrogant of airs, turned to his neighbour. "Not I; a certainty is no bet for me, though by our compact, Excellence, I would get my fair share of two-thirds back, if you won! But Berunduk BirlÁs here, having lost his best hawk after bustard to-day, is in a mood for tears, and would like to lose gold also."

Berunduk BirlÁs, the ablest man at the court, shook his head sadly. "Of a truth, friend, my loss is great enough to content me. Had my sons died or broken their necks I could not grieve more than for my true falcon-jinny Brighteyes! No man could desire a more captivating beauty."

Sultan Hussain went off into a peal of laughter. "Li! where is Ali-ShÎr? Where is our poet? Brighteyes the captivating beauty who catches hairs, eh? There is a subject for word-play. Out with a ghazel on the spot, friend Ali."

A thin, elegant-looking man with a pale, refined face, got up and made a perfect salute. From head to foot he was exquisite, the Beau Brummel of his age.

"Look," nudged one young courtier to another enviously, "he hath a new knot to his kerchief. How, in God's name, think you, is it tied?"

The incomparable person paused for one second only; then in the most polished of voices he poured out a lengthy ode, deftly ringing the changes on the word "baz" (falcon) which in Persian has at least a dozen different meanings.

A ripple of laughter followed his somewhat forced allusions, and he sat down again amid a chorus of applause.

Babar stood dum-foundered, yet in every fibre of his body sympathetic. Here was something new indeed! A new world very different from the rough and tumble clash of arms and swords and polo sticks at AndijÂn; but a world where, mayhap, he might hold his own.

"Well done! Well done!" he cried with the rest, and his uncle the Sultan nodded approval at the lad.

"Sit ye down, sit ye down!" he said; "and, cupbearer! a beaker of ShirÂz wine for the King of FerghÂna!"

For the life of him the boy could not refrain from one swift look at KÂsim's face, KÂsim who was all shocked propriety at such a violation of the rules both of IslÂm and Ghengis KhÂn; but after that one scared glance dignity came back.

"Your Highness!" he said, with pomp, waving his hand towards one of the butting rams, "like my ancestor the Barbarian I drink water only."

A smile went round the assembly and young Babar felt a glow of pride that he had not fallen so far short in wit. Thereinafter he sat and listened with wide eyes. His uncle was certainly a lively, pleasant man; but his temper was a bit hasty and so were his words. Still, despite that and overfreedom with the wine cup, he evidently had a profound reverence for the faith, since at the proper hour he put on a small turban tied in three folds, broad and showy, and, having placed a plume on it, went in this style to prayers!

That night when KÂsim was snoring in the tent and the hundred-and-a-half or thereabouts of his followers were slumbering peacefully, full up of kid pullao, Babar lay awake. He was composing an ode for the first time in his life. It was a sorry composition of no value except that it filled him with desire to do better.

CHAPTER IV

In this world's inn, where sweetest song abounds
There is no prelude to one song that sounds;
The guests have quaffed their wine and passed away
Their cups were empty and they would not stay.
No sage, no stripling, not a hand but thine
Has held this goblet of poetic wine;
Rise, then, and sing! Thy fear behind thee cast
And, be it clear or dull, bring forth the wine thou hast.

Jami.

Babar could not tear himself away from his uncle's camp. He lingered on and on, watching the military operations with a more or less critical eye, but absorbing culture wholesale.

It was a revelation to him, meeting men to whom fighting was not the end and aim of life; and these Begs and nobles of his uncle's court, though they were all supposed to be engaged in warfare with Khosrau ShÂh who was holding HissÂr over the river, for his nominee the nincompoop, had yet time for other things.

Ali-ShÎr, for instance, was wise beyond belief in all ways. Incomparable man! So kind, so courteous. Babar profited by his guidance and encouragement in his efforts to civilise himself. Thus becoming--since there is not in history any man who was greater patron of talent than Ali-ShÎr--one of that great company of poets, painters, professors, and musicians who owe everything to him, who, passing through this world single and unencumbered by wife or child, gave himself and his time up to the instruction of others.

So far, therefore, as the clash of intellect went, young Babar was satisfied. In regard to the clash of arms it was different. How such a mighty body of Mirzas, Begs, and chiefs, who, with their followers, if they were not double the number of the enemy over the water were at least one-and-a-half times that number, could content themselves with practical inaction passed his understanding.

When, too, they had such battering rams and catapults as positively made his mouth water! There was one of the latter which threw such a quantity of stones and with such accuracy that in half an hour--just before bedtime prayers--the enemy's fort was beautifully breached. But the night being deemed rather dark for assault and the troops preferring the safety and comfort of their trenches, no immediate attack was made; the result being that before morning the breach was repaired.

There was absolutely no real fine fighting, and at this rate his uncle, the Sultan, would doubtless spend the whole winter on the banks of the Amu river, and when spring came, patch up some sort of a peace from fear of the floods which always came down with the melting snow.

"That is his way," asserted KÂsim with a shrug of his shoulders. "He leads his army forth with pomp and state, and in himself is no mean general; but ever it comes to naught. It is so, always, when folk take to rhyming couplets, and putting spices to their food. Give me orders that hang together, and plain roast venison."

But all the while the honest man was stuffing his mouth full of lamb and pistachio nuts, and Babar smiled. Still he felt that, so far as the art of war went, he might go back to little AndijÂn without fear of leaving behind him any knowledge worth the learning. It was otherwise with the culture, and he flung himself with characteristic vitality into music lessons, and dancing lessons, elocution lessons and deportment lessons, until as he entered the court audience no one could have told that but a few weeks before, he had been as rough and as uncouth as old KÂsim, who stoutly refused veneer.

"What I am, God made me," he would say, "and if folk like it not let them leave. I budge not."

To which uncompromising independence, one pair of hands--delicate, long-fingered, ivory hands--gave fluttering applause. They belonged to a young man who, almost at first sight, impressed young Babar more than anyone he had seen in all his life. He was a helpless cripple who yet took his part in life like any other man. Every evening his spangled litter would be brought into the big audience tent and set down just below the King's. For Mirza Gharib-Beg (who styled himself Poverty-prince in allusion to the meaning of his name--poor) was the King's son by a low-born woman who had been passionately loved. So, despite the fact that he had been born misshapen, ugly, and that ill-health had always been his, Poverty-prince still had a hold on his father's affection. And no wonder; since, though his form was not prepossessing he had a fine genius, and though his constitution was feeble, he had a powerful mind. There was nothing, it seemed to Babar, that he could not do. He could rhyme with Ali-ShÎr, play the guitar with Abdulla-MarwÂrid and paint with BahzÂd. What is more, he could talk mysticism far better than KamÂl-ud-din, with his wagging black beard, who pretended to raptures and ecstasies and had written a portentously dull book about Sufism which he called "The Assembly of Lovers"--portentously dull and also profane--which was inexcusable.

But when Poverty-prince spoke of roses and nightingales and even of the red wine cup, he took you into another world; and he evidently believed what he said, whereas KÂmal-ud-din was all pose.

Yet the next instant the thin ugly face would show almost impish in its amusement and its owner would burst out with some sally that would set them all a-laughing; and him a-coughing for the change of air which was to have done him good was doing him harm; though he would not admit it.

"Wherefore should I?" he laughed gaily in some anxious face. "A man is as ill as he thinks himself--he is all things that he believes himself to be. So I am strong, and well, and young, and deeply enamoured of a beauteous lady. She is called Feramors--a pretty name," and he would catch up a lute over which his thin, long, ivory hands would flutter like butterflies and sing:

"Say! is it Love or Death, O Feramors!
That hides behind thy bosom's pearly doors?
I care not, so I reach the heart within.
Oh! let me in;
Open the closed doors, O Feramors!"

Truly he was a marvellous person! To Babar, boy as he was, the most marvellous thing in the camp. How could he, cripple, suffering, almost dying as he was, keep life at bay as it were? How could he sit so free of it? He, Babar, with his health and strength was not so independent, though he was more so than most, for, almost unconsciously, he set himself as free as he could from encumbrance even of thought.

He shrank even from so much as came to him from GharÎb, and avoided his cousin in consequence, spending such time as he could spare from his numerous lessons, and the watch KÂsim made him keep on military matters, in hunting amid the low hills.

But it was no use. That dark, curiously be-scented tent wherein the cripple lay laughing at life, had a strange attraction for him. He took to dropping into it on his way elsewhere, until old KÂsim grew uneasy.

"He lays spells on you, my liege," he protested. "They tell me he can do it to all young folk--so have a care!"

"Smear my forehead with lamp-black against the evil eye; then shall I be safe," laughed the boy, and yet in his heart he felt the spell. And, oddly enough, he liked it. He was fascinated by something in this distant, faraway cousin of his; so far-away that it scarcely seemed worth while calling him cousin. Yet, as grandmother IsÂn-daulet would say: "all men were descended from Adam!"

"Come in on thy return from the chase," said Poverty-prince one day when he had looked in on the scent sodden tent, a picture of youth and strength and health, in his fur posteen and his high peaked cap. "And bring thy bag with thee for this lifeless log to see. What shall it contain? Imprimis--a brace of chameleon birds. I love to see their iridescent necks and the six different colours between head and tail--mark you! how I remember thy description, cousin-ling?"

Babar blushed. "Thou said'st thou had never seen them," he began apologetically.

"Save through thine eyes and they are good enough for most folk. Be not ashamed, coz, of the gift God hath given thee. And thou shalt bring me a fat deer and some kalidge pheasant--and, with luck, a cock minÂwul. Then we will look at it with the same eyes--thou and I--" A wistfulness had crept into his voice, and he said no more.

But the curious thing was that the bag was ever just what Poverty-prince had predicted, neither more, nor less.

"Thou art a wizard, for sure," said Babar half seriously. "The thought of thy words makes my aim sure at times, and at another sets my bow arm a-quiver. Wert thou to say 'naught,' I should return empty-handed."

"So be it," laughed the cripple. "Why should we kill God's pretty creatures?"

And thereinafter two whole hunts produced nothing. Whether it was a fresh fall of snow in the hills that brought ill luck Babar could not say, but he looked at his cousin with awe.

"Thou hast more power I verily believe," he said, "than the Dream-man whom Uncle Hussain keeps--"

"For his amusement," put in Poverty-prince with a frown. "But that is black magic; mine is white. I do naught. 'Tis thy mind that answers--" he broke off and his large eyes--the only unmarred feature in his face--narrowed themselves to a piercing glance. "Wherefore should I not say it, cousin? Has it not struck thee, that had'st thou been born crooked and not straight, or had I been born straight and not crooked, we should have been as two twins? That is why I like thee, and thou likest me."

The boy sat and stared at him, almost incredulously. He could not imagine his youth and strength pent up in that prison of a body; and yet ...

Yes! without doubt there was some tie. Else why should he feel so intimate--why should he speak to Poverty-prince of things which every decent young Mahomedan was taught to keep to himself; for instance of Dearest-One and the possibility of her marrying BaisanghÂr?

The blood rushed to his face, however, with shame when he felt his cousin's hot, long-fingered, trembling hand close on his wrist in quick arrest.

"Marriage--say not the word! Dost not know? Nay--I forgot thy youth--and I will not soil thine ears with the tale. But we in foul HerÂt know most wickedness, most degradations. And there is that in miserable BaisanghÂr's life that bars marriage with any woman worthy the name. Aye! and he knows it--poor maimed soul enmeshed for ever by the wickedness of one who should have protected him--May God's curse light on him for ever. So think not of marriage, cousin."

Babar shook off his cousin's clasp haughtily. It was not that he resented having substance given to his vague doubts of BaisanghÂr--it was better to know for sure; but interference with his womenkind was intolerable. And he had brought it on himself!

"By your leave," he said with terrific dignity, "we will speak no more on such private matters. 'Tis my own fault. Such subjects are not meet for public conversations."

Poverty-prince lay back on his cushions and kindly raillery took possession of his face. "Not meet, sayest thou cousin-ling? Yet are they the best half--nay! the three quarters of life. Dost know that even to me, cripple, marriage hath played the major part?"

Babar's eyes involuntarily travelled over the distorted body, the crumpled limbs, and Poverty-prince laughed cynically.

"Thou art right, boy," he went on; "loathsome to sight and touch, what had I to do with weddings. But princedom weighs heavy with the pandars of the court. And 'twas done early. Mayhap they did not dream I would grow up so monstrous--as I did." He paused and his pale face grew paler, his hot fingers clasped and unclasped themselves. "Mayest thou never--nay! thou will not--see fear upon a girl's face. I saw it. Dost understand? Nay, thou art but a child still. Thank God! I did. So she waits for release by my death. And then--" He paused again and this time bright, cold raillery took possession of his face as he said: "Thou wilt make a fine bridegroom, cousin-ling, some day! Fair maids will not be alarmed at thee!"

"Likely I shall be of them," answered the boy stoutly; and it was true; barring Dearest-One, the stupid, mincing creatures filled him with dismay.

This passed but a few days before KÂsim, who thought his young charge had had quite enough of the camp, proposed starting homewards. There seemed no prospect of the campaign coming to a close. Quite a variety of strategical movements had been made, mines had been dug, forts besieged, but the result was nil. And time was passing. Events had not been going smoothly at Samarkand, the moment for intervention might be near and Grandmother IsÂn-daulet had sent a messenger advocating return.

None too soon, for the very same day King Hussain's runners brought news of a conspiracy to turn out BaisanghÂr, and bring in a younger brother Ali-KhÂn.

"But he is not of the blood, either," said Babar hotly. "KÂsim! we must go back at once." The desire for conquest was stirring in him once more.

"The sooner the better, sire," replied the stout warrior, settling his sword belt. He had wearied terribly among the smart soldiers and was longing for a real raid once more.

"To say farewell," echoed Poverty-prince, when Babar looked in that night at his cousin's tent; "I thought it was not to be for a week yet." And his hot hand clasped the cool one with a lingering touch.

"There was news from Samarkand," replied the lad, regret tempering the keenness which had come to his face with the prospect of action. "And, cousin, it matters little--'tis but a few hours' difference--"

"A few hours?" echoed the cripple, speaking, for the first time since Babar had known him, almost regretfully; "that means much to one who has but a few days or weeks to live. Not that it does so really, coz," he added, recovering his usual serenity. "And thou wilt spare me one of the hours? I dare claim so much of my twin?"

The pathetic playfulness of the appeal went straight to the lad's soft heart; he fell on his knees beside the cushions, then sat back in the Mahomedan attitude of prayer. "Nay, brother," he said--and there was quite a tremble in his young voice--"say not so--I am but a poor creature beside thee. Thou art--truly I know not what! Sometimes I think an angel from God's paradise--thou art so splendid!"

"Knowest thou if angels be splendid?" asked Poverty-prince with radiant raillery. "For myself I know not--only this--that I shall miss my double--" He looked at the lad's lithe limbs, at his long legs, his great stretch of arm. "And to think," he muttered, "that I might have been born so--My God! to think of it."

Then suddenly he clapped his hands and gave a peremptory order to the servant who appeared.

"See that I be not disturbed--that no one enters."

He waited till they were alone, then drew something from his bosom and held it before him in both hands. It was a tiny crystal bowl scarce large enough for his finger tips. But they held the glittering thing lightly. It looked like a diamond body to two fluttering ivory wings, as he said slowly, musically.

"It hath lain in my breast, ever. I found it in the hand of death," he said dreamily, "but the Riddle-of-Life ends for me, and begins for thee. So take it, when I have told thee how it came to me."

Those ivory hands of his seemed more like wings than ever as, still holding the bowl before him, he lay back and it showed clear against the shadows of the tent.

"Thou knowest," he went on, "the graveyards of the hill-folk? Set on an hill and thick with iris flowers--the flowers of immortality--the green sword leaves guarding the blossoms, guarding the quiet dead below? It was the day I saw fear in a maiden's eyes--there was such a graveyard not far from her father's dwelling--he is dead now and she awaits the release of death amongst beneficent ladies in a House-of-Rest at HerÂt--and I bid them carry me there; for my heart was aflame and I cursed God for this carcase, seeing she was fair. So they left me there overlooking the valley, and when they had gone I lay amid the crushed iris and writhed--but of that no more. It hath passed.

"So, suddenly, between my empty wide-spread arms and clutching fingers I saw something amid the crushed blossoms. It must have been a very old grave on which I lay, since the iris roots matted thick upon it as if to hide the dead that lay in the hollow of it; for the rams and the winds sweeping on that high exposed spot had torn the covering of soil from Mother Earth's bosom. What I saw was this crystal cup. Perchance it had been used when the dead was laid to rest, and forgotten. Perchance some sad lover had set it there with flowers and tears in the poignancy of first grief, and gone away to love another. Who knows? The iris-roots had grown to a cup around it; twisted, white, iris-roots like dead fingers; and I took it from them. Take thou it, O Zahir-ud-din Mahomed, from one close to the Adventure of Death. I burden the gift with but one condition--if ever thou comest across a frightened maid--" here his whole face became radiant with smiles--"be not afraid of her. So take it cousin-ling. It is no cup of King Jamsheed to bring thee counsel in thy need. Yet it hath its virtue to those, who, like thou hast, have eyes to see. It can bring content."

Content! was this the secret of Poverty-prince's charm? Babar, bold, young, every fibre of him keen-strung for the Life, on the brink of which he stood, cared little for content. Yet he took the cup and looked at it curiously. Quaint of a surety! Taller than it was broad. Small enough to lie in the hollow of the hand. The brim over-thick by reason of heavy bosses below the edge: five bosses like those in blown glass, but oval, like eyes. The rest faintly frosted by fine scratchings (were they without or within?--within surely) which, were they letterings, would need a magnifying glass ere they could be deciphered. But at the bottom, so disposed that one must read in drinking, these words showed clear:

"Save the cup of life, what gift canst thou bring?"

That was from HÂfiz surely?

"Aye! divine HÂfiz," replied his cousin answering his thought boldly. "Now, hold it to the light, cousin-ling, and see its virtue."

The boy did as he was bid, feeling dazed and dreamful. A seven-lamped tripod behind his cousin's cushions had been lit--at least he could not remember that it had been there when he came in--Seven little lamps ...

Why! those five bosses were deftly arranged to gather the light and send it ... God and His Prophet! How beautiful!

Through the clear eye before his eyes he saw his cousin's face--all glorified--splendid utterly ...

That something which came to him ever with the sight of beauty, filled him with joy ...

But stay! the bosses must be magnifying glasses also! He could read something.

What was it?

Ishk (love)? or Ashk (tears)?

"Thou wilt see more clearly when thou hast learnt to use the five eyes of the soul," came his cousin's voice; "then thine own thoughts will return to thee from the Mirror-of-Life. Now put it into the bosom of thy fur coat. There is room there for it and majesty likewise. And now I will sing the Song-of-the-Bowl ere thou goest."

He clapped his hands once more, and the boy sighed and rubbed his eyes dreamily. Surely the seven lamps had been lit? But now they were not; the semi-darkness of the scent-sodden tent closed in on him, and that was his cousin's every-day voice:

"Bring me my dulcimer, slave! Lo! King-ling, it suits the measure better than the cithÂra and I am proud of the tune! 'Tis my own."

So, after a while, the tinkling notes began, the voice rose plaintively:

p52
p53

"Clear Crystal Bowl! Thy sun-sparkles blind

Every poor soul whose eyes seek to find

Way through Life's wilderness on thy bright brim,

Crystal Bowl!

What wilt thou bring to him,

Darkness or Light?

Clear Crystal Bowl! Thy touch, icy cold,

Chills lovers lips that lay overbold

Hot clinging kisses on thy bright brim,

Crystal Bowl!

What wilt thou bring to him,

Love or Despair?

Clear Crystal Bowl! I laugh like thy wine!

Bring me Life's whole! all things must be mine!

Is not the wide world mirrored in thee

Crystal Bowl?

I bid thee bring to me

Joy, Grief, Life, Death--"

The voice ceased and there was silence for a little while.

But in all the long after-years the memory of those tinkling notes, that thin voice claiming the whole of life, remained with Zahir-ud-din Mahomed.

"Well! God's peace go with thee," said Poverty-prince brightly at the last; "methinks thy boyhood is about past, and sterner stuff hath to come. But keep the gift of death and if thou lose it--at least remember my poor verses. And, coz--" here the wizened face almost dimpled with laughter, "if thou comest across the frightened maid--I give no names, they are an encumbrance, remember to make her not frightened of my twin! Farewell."

It was a stirring night. The river had to be crossed silently in the very face of Khosrau ShÂh's pickets (for he was holding the north bank for his nominee the nincompoop) and a stealthy way made skirting the enemy's camp, ere they could reach the hills beyond. Some of the party felt inclined to put AndijÂn tactics in force, make a rush through the out-posts, give and take a few sabre cuts, and so make off; but Babar, even though old KÂsim hesitated, had learnt something besides accomplishments in his uncle's camp; he had learnt that time was long, and that it was well to choose your own. So he rode canny.

It was dawn ere they reached the last vantage ground whence they could see the camp they had left. It lay curiously calm and peaceful. KÂsim, more than half-asleep on his horse now there was no chance of a fine fight, yawned, and stretched his arms wide.

"No more of that for me," he said lustily. "I am for cut and thrust and a good bellyful of plain food."

"But I am for all things," laughed Babar. He was trying to pick out his cousin's tent, and as he spoke he put his hand into the bosom of his coat to feel for the Crystal Bowl.

He could not find it!

Had it dropped out or what...?

"I must go back," he said, half to himself--"I must, I must!"

"Go back? Wherefore?" asked old KÂsim. "What is it, sire--to go back is Death; the enemy is awake by now."

The boy-King looked at him keenly. "Aye!" he said shortly, "and to go on is Life. I must remember, as he said. Forward! gentlemen!"

CHAPTER V

The day of delight has come and the wind brings scent
Of musk and rose and lilies and peppermint.

Oh! day of delight pass slow!
God's flowers must blow.

The day of despair has come and the wind brings dust
To bury the flowers; the song of the birds is hushed.

Oh, day of despair pass swift!
Let God's clouds lift.

The days of despair and delight have come;
Ah, me! I care not away from my home.

The days of God pass swift and slow.
Allah-i-hu--allah-i-ho!

AshrÂf the Exiled.

Old IsÂn-daulet, who had been Queen-regent to all intents and purposes during Babar's absence, welcomed him back to AndijÂn somewhat charily. She had sent for him in a hurry when news came that the TurkhÂns of Samarkand had revolted against BaisanghÂr, captured that prince by stratagem, and put Mirza Ali his younger brother on the throne.

But now the tables were turned. BaisanghÂr, whom all knew to be wily as a fox, had not only managed to escape, but having somehow gained the sympathy of the townspeople, they had risen tumultuously against the Court-folk and the TurkhÂns, had besieged the citadel which had not been able to hold out for a single day, and had replaced BaisanghÂr--why only God knew!

"'Twill be because of his love odes, grandmother," said Babar gravely; "there is not a house in Samarkand where a copy of them is not to be found."

IsÂn-daulet sniffed captiously. "I would he would keep his love-songs to himself. There is Dearest-One sick as a magpie still with the shock of his death, and he is not dead, the good-for-nothing."

Babar's lip set. "He is dead to her anyhow," he said, "so no more dreams of that, grandmother. I forbid it, and so I will tell her."

"Hoighty-toighty!" sniffed the old lady; but in her heart of hearts she was glad.

"Look you!" she said to her daughter afterwards, "he spoke for all the world like his grandfather when things went wrong. Lo! he is boy no longer. We must treat him as a man, with wiles."

Such, however, was not Dearest-One's treatment of her brother; nor was his of her, what might have been expected from his peremptory tone to his grandmother. How could it be, when he found her pale and dispirited, despite her joy at seeing him? He beat about the bush uncomfortably for quite a long time, until with characteristic clarity he blurted out: "And, sister, thou must think no more of BaisanghÂr--he is a worthless scoundrel--"

The girl, ill as she was, looked as if she could have stabbed him with her eyes.

"That he is not," she said proudly; "thou art like the rest of them,--even the KwÂja--yea! I have talked with him concerning it and he knows, mayhap, more than thou dost--who confound the sinner with the sin. But look you, Zahir-ud-din Mahomed, were there no man on earth but Mirza BaisanghÂr I would not have him; and yet I love him dearly, dearly." She sank back on her bed, hid her face in the quilt, and sobbed.

Babar stood aghast, yet feeling as if he could cry too.

"I wish thou had'st known Cousin GharÎb," he said suddenly, causelessly. "He would have understood. I cannot--not yet."

Then he turned and left her. What was the use of trying to comfort anyone when you did not know the cause of their sorrow? And Joy and Grief, Life and Death had to come if one were to live.

Then life was so full just at the present. The very story of BaisanghÂr's escape was enough to make one's heart beat. Under sentence of death, and such a death! To be taken with pomp and ceremony to the foot of the throne in the Gokserai--the Green-palace--that wonderful palace, four stories high, built by the Great Timur in the citadel, where every kingly descendant of his must be enthroned, where every kingly descendant of his must die--and there to be strangled! With that before him, to have the nerve in a few minutes to unbrick a closed door, run to the bastion, fling himself over the parapet wall, and so find shelter in KwÂja KwÂrka's house--the holiest man in the city! A thousand pities, indeed, that BaisanghÂr had sunk so low. Aye! Dearest-One was right. One could condemn the sin, and yet do justice to the sinner. Yet there was a lack of kingliness too that was inexcusable. To allow his brother Ali to escape also was perhaps to err on the side of mercy, but to submit to be beaten by him in battle immediately afterwards was distinctly unnecessary!

It complicated matters, too, most dreadfully. For here was BaisanghÂr, acclaimed by the people, more or less imprisoned in the City of Samarkand, and Ali-Mirza, nominated by the Court, beleaguering him from the BokhÂra side, while Khosrau ShÂh, relieved from the necessity of defending HissÂr for his nincompoop by the withdrawal of Sultan Hussain back to KhorasÂn, was hastening all he knew to put in his oar for his nominee from the HissÂr side!

This being so, and neither of the three claimants having a shadow of right beside his, Babar's, there was nothing for it, but to be on the spot at once.

So kettledrums were beat and pennons unfurled, while Nevian-GokultÂsh saw to his young master's coat of mail, and the latter pored over the memoirs of his great ancestor Timur to see what wrinkles he could pick up in regard to the disposition of troops in a real fine fight; for, being a born general, he was dissatisfied with what he had seen, even with Uncle Hussain's smart soldiers.

Only Dearest-One took no interest in the military preparations; she embroidered no flag with crinkled gold. She sat on the roof and watched the young King ride out in all his bravery and then she prayed God for his safety, and also for the safety of that other one, who deserved none.

And, for a time, both her prayers were answered. The summer passed on to winter and still Samarkand, the protected city that has never really fallen, sat gaily secure in its wide suburbs and vast network of fortified gardens. Scarcity, indeed, pressed harder outside the walls than within. Then the nincompoop whose only object apparently in advancing on Samarkand had been to pursue his mistress, the daughter of a high Court official, succeeded in marrying her, and so retreated.

Thus Babar found himself confronting BaisanghÂr supported by the populace, and Ali by the Court. They waited and looked at each other for some time; and then one morning, after preliminaries, Babar moved his army some twelve miles down the right bank of the river Kohik, and Ali-Mirza moved his down the left. So, with their armies behind them (though it would seem, somewhat helpless either for support or protection) the two young Princes each with five followers rode from their own side to the middle of the stream and with the chill water just touching their horses' bellies, agreed that if the summer came again they would harry Samarkand together.

After which solemn ceremonial Ali returned to his side of the river, and Babar to his; whence he set off to FerghÂna.

It was not a very distinguished campaign but it was his first. Perhaps it was as well it was uneventful for he was busy working his small army into something like discipline. Therein, he saw clearly, boy as he was, lay success; without it, there was nothing but one long succession of isolated raids, incoherent, useless, leaving the people ready, as they had been in the beginning, for a new, and yet another new conqueror.

It was something, therefore, when in the next spring, he found himself able to restrain his troops and to punish severely many straggling Moghuls who had been guilty of great excesses in the different villages through which they had passed. It was an unheard-of idea, but it had a marked effect; for shortly afterwards when his camp was close to a place called YÂm, a number of persons, both traders and others, came in from the town to buy and sell, and somehow, about afternoon prayer-time a general hubbub arose during which every shop and every stranger was plundered. Yet an order that no person should presume to detain any part of the effects or property thus seized, but that the whole should be restored without reserve before the first watch of the next day was over, resulted in not one bit of thread or a broken needle being kept by the army!

It was a glorious victory for pure ethics and quite repaid Babar for having to remain for six weeks outside Samarkand. Besides, the peach gardens were in full bloom. It was curious going out into the pleasure ground of the city, to slash, and hack, and hew, and kill! But there was no other way for it, and many were the sharp skirmishes that took place with the townspeople where folk as a rule had been wont to disport themselves on holidays. But in war-time things got upside down; witness the dastardly deceit of the Lover's Cave where five of Babar's most active men were killed. Seduced by a treacherous promise to deliver up the fort if a party came thither by night, a picked troop was chosen for the service, with this result.

It rankled bitterly in the young commander's heart; he felt himself at fault for his greatest weakness--an inveterate habit of believing what he heard.

Yet he had his consolations. Day by day, as he waited, doing his best with the small force at his command to cut off the supplies from the city, the number of townspeople and traders who came out to traffic in the camp bazaar increased, until it became like a city and you could find there whatever is procurable in towns. And day by day, the inhabitants of the country around came in and surrendered themselves, their castles, their lands, high and low. Only the city of Samarkand held out. It was in the end of September and the sun was entering the Balance, when Babar, weary of waiting, made a feint march to the rear and the garrison of Samarkand, jumping to the conclusion that he was in retreat, rushed out in great number, both soldiers and citizens. Then orders were given to the cavalry in reserve to charge on both flanks; whereupon God prospering the proceeding, the enemy were decisively defeated; nor from that time forward did they ever again venture on a rally. No! though Babar's soldiers advanced through the now leafless peach gardens to the very ditch and carried off numbers of prisoners close under the walls.

And still fair Samarkand stood secure. Seven whole months had the blockade lasted, and now the winter's cold was coming on to aid the garrison. In addition, the great TurkhestÂn raider ShaibÂni KhÂn was said to be on his way with a large force to intervene in the quarrel. Both dangers had to be faced. Babar felt, in view of the first, that he must cantoon his men, and set to work marking out the ground for the huts and trenches; so, leaving labourers and overseers to go on with the work, he returned to his camp. None too soon, for the very next morning a hostile army showed to the north. It must be ShaibÂni, prince of Free-lances!

Nothing dismayed, by the fact that fully half his soldiers were away seeking winter quarters, Babar put the forces he had with him in array, and marched out to meet the enemy. Boldness met with its reward. ShaibÂni withdrew, and after giving the young King some nights of sleepless anxiety went back whence he came, and BaisanghÂr, disappointed in relief, resigned himself to despair and fled accompanied by two or three hundred naked and starving followers.

"In the whole habitable world are few cities so pleasantly situated as Samarkand." So wrote Babar when at the age of fifteen he found himself met as King by the chief men of the city, by the nobles, by the young cavaliers, and escorted to the Garden-Palace where BaisanghÂr had lived. It was a great relief to him that his cousin had escaped, indeed he had taken no precautions to prevent his doing so. Babar's quarrel was not with him, but with his claim, and as the lad--for he was but a lad still--sat that night under the roof which had sheltered the deposed prince, he told himself he had been right when he had said to Dearest-One that BaisanghÂr would never make a king. There were no signs of kingship in that Garden-Palace. No plans or sketches, no dry-as-dust schedules. Not one of the papers and models such as he, Babar, already carried with him. Only a lute, a dulcimer, some dice-boxes. Not even luxury! Poor BaisanghÂr! Rightly had he called himself an unsubstantial shadow. His poetry was the best part of him; and his painting.

Babar sitting alone in the alcoved room which BaisanghÂr had evidently left in a hurry, lay back among the cushions of the divan and thrust his hand beneath them to adjust them to his head. There was something hard beneath their softness. He drew it out and found a small square frame. Of gold--no! it was green enamel and on it were set, like flowers, turquoises, rubies, amethysts, topazes.

Why did it remind him of the spring meadows about AndijÂn? The spring meadows set with forget-me-nots and tulips? It was a bit too dark where he was to see the pale painting it held, so he rose and took it to the light.

Dearest-One!

And with a rush came back accusingly something he had almost forgotten all these months of striving and stress. Poverty-prince! the Cup-of-Life! those bosses that gathered the Light and magnified what was written by Fate. Once or twice he had thought of it carelessly; but now...?

Why had the thought come back to him?

It was a speaking likeness. Faint-coloured, delicate as a dream. Perhaps BaisanghÂr had meant it to be so. It was likely he did. Poor BaisanghÂr! For the life of him Babar could not help pity, even when he found the back of the frame was covered with fine writing--with verses!--not even when he recollected that it was to his sister that they were dedicated!

In truth there was little in them of offence, and Babar as he went to sleep that night, King of Samarkand, caught himself repeating them. They were certainly very neat--very neat indeed. And now that he had had time to think, why should not poor Dearest-One see them? They had given him a kindlier feeling towards the writer, so why should not she...?

Why not, indeed! The Cup-of-Life held all things for all.

Yes! he would send, or give her the portrait as it stood. It was really an excellent piece of work; and the words were perfect--the construction, and the grammar so good.

He fell asleep reciting them.

HEFT-AURANG^[1]

THE SEVEN THRONES

Seven thrones and each a star
Set in God's Heaven afar;
Seven thrones and each for thee;
Thank God there is no place

Beside thy face
For me! for me!

Seven sins! Ah! more than seven
To cast me down from heaven;
Seven sins; and each of me!
Thank God there is no place

Beside my face
For thee! for thee!

Seven stars and one a pole
To guide the wandering soul
To rest; but not for me--
There is no grace or place

Beside thy face.
Ah me! Ah me!

"Samarkand is a wonderfully elegant city." So wrote its young King the next evening. He had spent the day in going round his new possessions and had found them to his liking. Not only was the little Mosque with its carven wooden pilasters quaintly beautiful, but the big one was magnificent with its frontispiece on which was inscribed in letters so large that they could be read a mile off:

"And Abraham and Ishmael raised the foundations of the House of God saying 'Lord accept it from us; for Thou art He who heareth and knoweth.'"

Then the gardens were a joy, the baths the best he had ever seen, the bakers' shops excellent, the cooks skilful. And the dried prunes of BokhÂra, a fruit renowned as an acceptable rarity and a laxative of approved excellence, were to be found in perfection. Then there was the Observatory built by Ulugh-Beg, his ancestor, who had been a great mathematician. Babar had never seen an observatory before; indeed there were at that time but seven in the whole world, so it was an honour to possess one. He spent many days poring over its astronomical tables, trying to understand them; and finally put on a mathematical master, since no science could possibly come amiss to a King. Meanwhile Nevian-GokultÂsh and KÂsim and all the AndijÂn nobles, bickered inevitably with the Samarkand grandees, and Babar found no small difficulty in keeping the peace.

Still, life was once more splendid; at any rate for the young King. But the soldiers grumbled at the lack of loot. It was all very well to say that the country had voluntarily submitted and was therefore beyond plunder, and that from a city which had suffered the vicissitudes of war for two years and withstood a siege of seven months, it was impossible to levy anything by taxation. It was all very well to supply the inhabitants with seed corn and supplies to enable them to carry on till harvest time. But charity began at home, and home under these circumstances was best.

The wild Moghuls deserted first; then by twos and threes, the other men slipped away by night.

Yet still life was splendid. On those same clear winter's nights Babar could watch the stars with new-found knowledge.

"If the Most Excellent would watch the barracks instead," growled old KÂsim, "it would be well. Our men grow thin. There are scarce a thousand of them left, all told; and new friends are not so good as old ones. The Samarkandis are doubtless fine fellows, as the Most Excellent appears to find them; but would they follow back to AndijÂn if occasion occur?"

And occasion did occur. A letter arrived from Babar's maternal uncle the KhÂn of MoghulistÂn who, urged doubtless by the deserters, wrote saying that as the former had possessed himself of Samarkand, it was only fair that his younger brother JahÂngir, who, after all, was the son of Omar Saikh's first wife should be given AndijÂn.

KÂsim, who with his usual frown at all letters sat listening, spat solemnly on the ground. "Poison breeds poison," he said; "I deemed that talk had been spilt in the blood from Hussan Yakoob's hinder parts four years past. But 'tis never too late for mischief when women are left to themselves as they are at AndijÂn."

"But my grandmother is sagacious," began Babar.

KÂsim shrugged his shoulders. "Saw you ever a woman who could manage a woman, sire? So have not I. Begum FÂtima and she have been spitting at each other like wild cats, and what is wanted is a stick. Now, what is to be said?"

Babar spoke hotly. "That I will not hear of it! No! though I might of myself have made my brother governor. But of myself. This savours of command. He knows my men have gone back! I will not hear the tone of authority."

And Babar as he spoke felt himself tremble with anger. His voice was hoarse, too, and his head ached. He had been sitting up all night in the Observatory to watch an eclipse of the moon, and despite his fur coat had felt chill; for February had brought bitter winds.

"So be it!" said old KÂsim gleefully. He was getting weary of Samarkandi side, and foresaw more fighting now the spring was at hand.

Next day a special messenger, foot in hand from AndijÂn, found Babar in bed with a severe cold. And the letter from KwÂja KÂzi did not mend matters. Briefly, the deserting soldiers, discontented, disloyal, were giving trouble, and if help were not sent at once events might come to a very bad termination.

That night delirium came to the young soul, as the young body lay fighting for breath against pneumonia.

The physician bled him, of course, and fed him with almonds and ginger. And they closed every door and window, so that the wood-smoke filled the room and such little lung-space as was left. But splendid youth and health were his, and after a few days he lay outwearied with his hand-to-hand fight with Death, looking at the letters which had followed fast upon each other during his illness. And each brought worse news than the last. AndijÂn was besieged. Any moment his women-folk might fall into the hands of the enemy. He must start at once. To set aside Nevian-GokultÂsh's protestations, was easier than to rise and dress. Once up, however, he managed the council of war creditably, and for a day held his own bravely, giving orders for this and that.

A tall, thin, haggard young figure with sharpened features and eager eyes defying Fate; until suddenly voice left him, he struggled on for an hour or two, then lay unconscious. So weak that they did not dare bleed him again, but mercifully left him as he was. Only Nevian-GokultÂsh at his right hand, moistening the dear lips with cotton dipped in water, while KÂsim sat still as a statue, the tears running down his furrowed cheeks.

Was this, then, the end of that vivid young life, the like of which had never been seen?

But the Samarkandi fellows who did not really care might go about the city as dogs, and yelp the news that Zahir-ud-din Mahomed their King was dying, nay! was dead. It was easy to see that this had been done, for hour by hour, day by day the Garden-Palace became more and more empty, more and more solitary.

A runner from AndijÂn, bearing further news found it so, and, anxious for the truth, stole upstairs on tiptoe to see for himself.

How still! How cold! How silent! And that half-seen form in the dusk, motionless among the quilts? Dead! Dead! or so close to Death that no alternative remained.

That night as his bells tinkled from his post-runner's pike as he ran past village, and field, and wood, they jangled the refrain that was on his mouth for all who cared to listen.

"Babar is dead! Life has ended! The cup is finished!"

Yet, even as the words rang out on the chill air, other words, faint, scarce to be heard, were startling those two sad watchers in the Garden-Palace.

"The Crystal Bowl. Give it back to me ... I ... I laugh as I drink.... Bring me the whole, I say, the whole."

The boy's brain, faintly conscious, was taking command once more.

And the body obeyed. In four or five days he was reading letters of despair from his mother, from old IsÂn-daulet, from Dearest-One. Samarkand, they said, had been taken with troops from AndijÂn. Could not one man be spared from Samarkand to keep AndijÂn?

Babar had not the heart to delay, and ill as he was set off in a litter with such followers as he could gather together. It was a Saturday in March that he started; just a hundred days since he had entered Samarkand, and he knew he could not hope to return as King. "One hundred days only," he thought, as he jolted through the peach gardens that were once again swelling to bud.

He reached Khojend by forced marches in a week's time; but by then he was on his horse again, beginning to regain strength and colour.

So he wondered why the people looked at him so strangely as he rode through the town. Did they take him for a ghost?

Yet he was even as one when they told him the news. Just a week before, on the very Saturday when he had started in such haste from Samarkand, AndijÂn had capitulated, needlessly capitulated, to the enemy on the news of Babar's death brought by a returning post-runner.

For the sake of AndijÂn he had lost Samarkand, and now found that he had lost the one without preserving the other.

Worse still, he had lost a dear friend; for the saintly KwÂja KÂzi, protesting against the premature yielding of the citadel while there was yet no lack of provisions or of fighting men, had been barbarously martyred by being hanged in a shameful manner over the gate of the citadel.

No wonder Babar wrote in the diary he had begun to keep: "I was in a very distressed condition and wept a great deal."

CHAPTER VI

Blest is the soul that is lifted above
The paltry cares of Self's selfish love,
Which adds no weight to another's care
And gives no soul a burden to bear,
Which takes what comes as its part and lot,
Which laughs at trouble and worries not,
Which sleeps without malice or fraud in its breast
And rises pure from its daily rest.

JÂmi.

There was a sad meeting, naturally, with the womenfolk Babar had hoped to help, and who were--somewhat contemptuously--sent to him, unharmed, after a few days. Or perhaps that "divinity which doth hedge a king" or whatever it was, which all his life long ensured Babar's own safety, extended itself to those who were dear to him.

Anyhow they came, and fell with tears on the neck of their dethroned darling. Dearest-One, slim and tall, her face still showing the lines of conflicting anxieties, yet still sweet utterly, without trace of bitterness for her brother. The KhÂnum, too rejoiced at seeing her son alive and well to care so much about his loss of dignity. Old IsÂn-daulet, keener of look and sharper of tongue than ever, but with a world of sympathy in her stern eyes for the lad who had lost all save honour. For she realised that Babar had practically given up Kingship for the sake of his womenkind. He had had fair grip of Samarkand, and even with but a thousand devoted followers of his own to help him hold it, could, nay would have done so.

Babar, himself, did not attempt to deny his virtue. He never did; he was too frank to gloze over any of his actions, good or bad. He had done the right thing and he accepted the fact gravely; perhaps a trifle pompously; but that was his nature. In the same way, he could not fail to see, that what had placed him in the unfortunate position of having insufficient followers to hold both Samarkand and AndijÂn, was no error of judgment on his part, but simply his extreme and unusual justice in refusing to grind down the distressed inhabitants of the former city for the benefit of his soldiery. Could he only have shut his eyes to the usual undisciplined plunder his army would not have deserted wholesale.

He was not introspective, but he knew, vaguely, that he had, somehow, had no choice in the matter. He had been born with this strong sense of justice, so he could not help himself; therefore despite this recognition of his own virtue, it slipped from him like water off a duck's back leaving no self-conceit behind.

So he welcomed his loving women quite whole-heartedly, and then wept more profusely than ever at the difficulty of maintaining them in proper fashion. Not that they wanted this. The KhÂnum, gentle, kindly soul, was only too glad that her quite capable hands should do all things for her darling, Dearest-One brisked up with work that took her out of herself, and IsÂn-daulet had roughed it too much in her youth not to enjoy the familiarity of roughing it again. And life, even at Khojend, a miserable place in which a single nobleman would have found it difficult to support his family, was not without its interests. Of the rather more than two hundred, and considerably less than three hundred followers who chose exile with their young King, quite a number were men of good family, whose wives and children joined them.

There was, therefore, company of a sort. Then Babar, despite his tears, was not one to give in. Inspired as he was by an ambition for conquest and extensive dominions, he could not, on account of one or two paltry defeats, sit down and look idly about him.

So, at any rate, he told the three loving women with his usual serious pomp, when he sent a request for assistance to his uncle, the KhÂn of MoghulistÂn, and then set off to reconnoitre around Samarkand. He returned ere long disappointed; but was soon on the march again to see his uncle in person at Tashkend. In this he was encouraged by IsÂn-daulet who remembered her brother of old. "Lo! I know him. A good soul but a stupid. The brains of my father, Yunus, went in the female line. But if you beat his ears with words he will listen. And keep on the soft side of ShÂh-Begum, my husband's widow--God rest his soul! Anyhow he is at peace from her! A clever woman, but like a camel in mud--slippery!"

And this expedition was so far successful that the young leader actually returned from it once more at the head of some seven or eight hundred horsemen. Rather a wild lot, mostly free-lance Moghuls eager for loot and violence. But it was better than nothing, though Khojend was not large enough to hold them, even for a night. Mercifully, however, there was an enemy's fort some forty miles off, so, taking scaling ladders with them, they rode on to it and carried the place by surprise. But even one day of Babar's strict discipline was more than enough for the wild men of the desert, and the very next morning the Moghul Begs represented that, having but a mere handful of men, no possible benefit could result to anyone from the keeping of one miserable castle; and so, there being truth in this remark, they rode off to their desert again unabashed, leaving Babar to return annoyed, but not despondent. For at this particular fortress there grew a particular melon, yellow in colour, with skin puckered like shagreen leather. A remarkably delicate and agreeable melon, with seeds about the size of those of an apple, and pulp four fingers thick, which everyone agreed was not to be equalled in that quarter.

It was as well, certainly, to have gained something if only a good melon, and the little party at Khojend feasted on it and thanked God they had their boy back again safe and sound.

The summer was passing to autumn when another fit of despondency came to young Babar in the news of his cousin GharÎb-Beg's death. The invalid had lingered far longer than had been expected, but still the certainty that he was gone brought grief; the more so because it re-aroused regret for the lost Crystal Bowl; regret which had almost been forgotten in the clash of arms of the last few months. But now he had time--only too much of it--for thoughts. Not given to mysticism in any form, he yet wondered vaguely if the Crystal Bowl had ever existed, or if the whole incident had not been part of the curious hold Poverty-prince had had upon his imagination; and not on his only, but on the imagination of all with whom the cripple had come in contact.

And now he was dead! Gone for ever, like so many friends in these last troublous times.

Babar, translucent as the crystal itself, gloomed under the shadow of his regrets till his mother began to fret with the fear of on-coming illness.

But Dearest-One knew her brother better. "He must get away from us all," she said. "Yea! even from old KÂsim and his warriors. Let him go to the White Mountains a-hunting for the winter."

But Babar would have none of it.

The White Mountains? Aye! they would be splendid--there were more bears there than in any other part of the country. Aye! and snow leopard too--the lad's eyes glistened as he admitted this--but he could not leave his women-folk again, and he ought not to leave those who, to their own cost, had chosen to stick by him.

"Then we will go also," said Dearest-One, nothing daunted. "We are not of towns more than thou art, and thou canst divide thy magnificent army!--take a hundred men with thee and leave an hundred to guard Khojend!"

Her sweet eyes smiled at him, and he agreed. No one in all his life had understood him like Dearest-One, he thought; there was perfect confidence between them, though, strangely enough, he had never yet given her the portrait he had found in the Garden-Palace--the portrait left by BaisanghÂr in his flight.

Why had he not done so? He scarcely knew, except that he had felt shy of broaching a subject that seemed buried. 'Twas best not to rouse coiled snakes, and BaisanghÂr, who had taken refuge in BokhÂra, had gone out of their lives altogether; out of his, Babar's, at any rate.

But everything seemed gone out of that; as the Turkhi couplet said:

"No home, no friends, no roof above my head;
Six feet of earth, no more, to make my bed."

The White Mountains, however--white indeed during winter with their snowy slopes invading all save the tiny cleft of the valley where the skin tents of the little party had been pitched--soon brought back content. It was as if the soft covering of snow had blotted out the past, and the winter slipped by, full up with trivial distractions.

Babar, returning long after dark to the encampment with half-a-dozen or so of bear-skins, forgot he was, or ever had been, King. And when early spring came on, and the bears were breeding, he took to hunting tulips instead. There were so many different kinds of them. Over thirty; and one yellow, double and sweet-scented like a rose. Dearest-One used to accompany him on these expeditions, for she was a real Moghul maiden, and the bright, cold winter had braced her up, until her cheeks glowed once more. Yet still Babar had never given her the portrait of herself, though he carried it with him more than once with that determination. Again, he scarcely knew why, except that it seemed to him the right thing to do. Why should she not have it?

But one day the brother and sister had wandered high over the melting snow slopes, where the flowers lay thick as a carpet. Blue spring gentian and clustered pink primrose, purple pansy, and deep brown nodding columbines above a mosaic of forget-me-not and yellow crowsfoot. Great sweeps and drifts of flowers where the snow-drifts ended, and beyond in the far, far distance, in a dip of the hills, a level line of clear cobalt-blue.

"Yonder lies Samarkand," said Babar, glooming in a second with the thought of past defeat; but his mind, ever vagrant, followed swiftly a line of new thought as he narrowed his long eyes to see better. "Had I the quaint contrivance at the Observatory there," he went on; "did I not tell thee of it?--no!--Well! 'twas a thing with curved glasses in a box and it made far-off things seem near--but blurred sometimes. Still had I it, I could mayhap see the Green-Palace. It stands high above the town."

Dearest-One, her hands clasped idly over her knees as she sat on a little peak of rock and ice that rose out of the flowers, was silent for a space; then she said dreamily:

"'Twas in the Green-Palace, was it not, where Kingship comes and goes, that BaisanghÂr was to die that time he escaped?"

Babar hesitated. It was the first time his sister had mentioned her cousin's name to him; but now that the subject had been broached, might it not be better to take the opportunity offered? He had the portrait with him. Why not have it out and have done with it? After all it was a fitting place; the green alp all starred with flowers reminded him of the AndijÂn meadows and they of the green enamel frame starred with ruby, turquoise, amethyst, topaz.

"I have something here," he said, fumbling in his fur coat, "that I have meant to give thee for some months; but--I know not why--" So he began haltingly; then warming to his subject told her in his own inimitable way, every tiny touch giving life to the picture, how and where he had found what he finally placed in her hands.

The girl who had listened coldly looked at it still more chillily.

"'Twas not meant for me," she said at last, and her tone was as ice--"And he prized it little, since he left it behind him."

Babar with the returned miniature in his hand, stared at her in confused amaze, feeling that, of a truth, women were kittle cattle. One could never count on them--and all these months he had been afraid of exciting a storm of tears!

Distinct ill-usage was in his voice as he said gravely: "But thou hast not seen the verses writ behind, and they are good. I stake my word they are excellent and correct in every elision, every poetic licence."

It may have been the bathos in the lad's last eager protest which kept the pathos of poor BaisanghÂr's words from making full mark, which kept the girl's lips from quivering overmuch, which kept the mist of tears from overflowing to her cheeks as the words fell on the flower-scented air. So little, to frail humanity, turns grief to laughter and smiles to tears.

Anyhow Dearest-One sat silent, and a faint smile curved her thin red lips.

"Yea!" she said softly, "they are good verses; but he was ever a poet."

And then suddenly the poetry which lies hid at the heart of all sorrow, all longing, all deprivation, surged on her and her face lit up with passionate feeling. "Give it me back, brotherling! give it me back. Let us leave it here! Here! on this high unknown place among God's flowers! Here! amid ice and snow! Here! overlooking the Palace where he would have died. Here! close to high heaven where there is understanding!" Her voice had risen as her thought rose, and now rang out joyous, triumphant. "Lo! the Heft-Aurang will look down on my face night after night and the pole star will point the way to him.... Ah! BaisanghÂr! have patience, have patience! love will point the way!..."

She laid the portrait face upwards to the clear blue sunshiny sky on a cold slab of ice that filled up--and looked as if it had filled up for centuries of chill summers and frost-bound winters--the wide clefts of the rock beside her; then stood up and stepped down amid the flowers, tearless, radiant.

"Come, brother!" she said. "It grows late. Let us descend, they will be waiting."

But Babar looked meditatively at the pictured face, and then at the one before him transfigured by emotion.

"So that is love!" he said at last with a curious impersonality in his tone. "Truly it is wonderful; and after all there is not so much difference between it and tears!"

So in a flood, came back to him that one glimpse he had had in the Crystal Bowl of his cousin's face. He saw it again clearly; he seemed to hear his voice telling of the frightened maiden. He had never thought of her since; such things passed quickly from his boyish mind. But now the wonder came as to whether he would ever meet her. He might, without recognising her, since he did not know who she was.

But Dearest-One might know; such things were part and parcel of the woman's life. His sister, however, was already half way down the slope and he had to run to overtake her.

"Do I know?" she echoed to his question, quite calmly, having had time to recover her serenity. "Wherefore not? Such knowledges have to be kept by someone; so we women guard it. She whom Mirza GharÎb-Beg deserted--" she spoke with distinct blame--"was well within the circle of distinction, being both of the royal house and also of the lineage of Sheik JÂmi, the divine poet--on whom be peace! Therefore she deserved a better fate than to live her life in a House-of-Rest--as I shall live mine," she added with conviction.

"But thou art so young," protested Babar, ever ready to follow any new lead of thought.

Dearest-One flashed out on him in her old way. "Young! One year older than she--so there! She was but a child, and GharÎb-Beg, remember, was but two years older." She paused, then added hurriedly: "Did I not tell thee we silly women guarded such trivial knowledge as our lives?"

To judge by Babar's women-folk (one of his many widowed aunts had joined the little camp on a visit--he had endless aunts and he seemed to be a favourite with all--) they guarded other trivial knowledges as their lives also. Babar returning home of an evening would find a regular Turkhi feast including goats' milk cheese fritters, made, of course, after the family recipe, spread out for his delectation, and Dearest-One never forgot to put violet essence in the thick milk. And plenty of sugar, for the lad had a sweet tooth. Then as they sat round the great, pine-log fire at night, IsÂn-daulet would call for a song; none of those niggling Persian odes, about the Beloved's Eyebrows and a Cup of Wine--the which was forbidden, though many good men fell away from grace and were none the worse for it--not in this world at any rate, and for the next who could tell since the dear KÂzi was not there to lay down the law ...

"The KÂzi was a saint," interrupted Babar with certainty; "I know it; first because the men who martyred him have all since died. That is one proof. Then he was a wonderfully bold man. Most men have some anxiety or trepidation about them. The KwÂja had not a particle of either, which is also no mean proof of sanctity."

Old IsÂn-daulet chuckled. "Then are all my family canonised," she said, "and Paradise will have small peace! But sing, boy, a rattling TurkhomÂn ballad and bawl it fairly, if thou canst, now-a-days."

But Babar had learnt better than bawling over in Uncle Hussain's camp, and though his grandmother shook her head over his rendering of "ToktÂmish KhÂn" still 'twas a fine song with a good stirring chant to it:

The pale white willows grow in the sand,
ToktÂmish Beg.
Choose one to hobble thy horse's leg
That thy bay steed stand.

Thy red blood drips on the yellow sand,
ToktÂmish KhÂn.
Wilt bind his wound, wife of Mirza JÂn
With thy jewelled hand?

The wound is doleful, the kiss was sweet
ToktÂmish Kull.
Which poison, man! makes thine eyes so dull
And thy breath so fleet?

Oh! my bay horse neighed when I did sing,
And Mir JÂn's wife
Swore she would love me all my life
And gave me a ring.

Thy steed will find him a rider soon
And fair Narghiss
Will have a new lover to cuddle and kiss
Ere another moon.

But thy mother is old; she has lost her brave
ToktÂmish KhÂn;
Let her carry her sheaf to Death's wide barn
And dig her a grave!

The firelight danced on the young face as it sang cheerily. The KhÂnum, his mother, wept unobtrusively at the thought of what she would do if her young brave were to die. Old IsÂn-daulet beat time with precision; Dearest-One smiled gently; but Nevian-GokultÂsh--the Heart-of-Stone--held up his finger.

"Hist!" he said, "a horse's steps."

Not one but many. A little detachment of loyalists headed by KÂsim Beg, arriving in hot haste with renewed hope!

Babar stood up tall, strong, and threw his wide arms out as if to shake off inaction.

"Whence?" he asked briefly; "East, west, north or south?" There was weariness in the thought, not in the tone. He was ready to fight anywhere for Kingship again, though his heart sank at the futility of it all. BokhÂra, Samarkand, HissÂr, and half-a-dozen other chief-ships always changing hands. But this, a message of treaty from Ali Mirza who had held Samarkand since it had dropped from Babar's hand might mean something. So he was in the saddle and off; only to return then, and half-a-dozen other times, despondent, to admit that his star was not yet in the ascendant.

IsÂn-daulet wearied of waiting at last, and set off herself to MoghulistÂn to levy troops to aid her grandson in the name of her dead husband. The KhÂnum went with her, and Dearest-One took the opportunity of retiring with one of her old aunts, to a House-of-Rest. So Babar was left alone. He would not remain at Khojend, however; he felt that he had already taken too much from the loyalists there, so in a state of irresolution and uncertainty he made for the border land of the PamÎrs beyond the White Mountains. There he remained amongst the nomad tribes, perplexed and distracted with the hopelessness of his affairs.

And here, as winter passed to spring once more, a saintly KwÂja--also an exile and a wanderer--came to visit him. And having no help to give, no advice to offer to one so down-cast, prayed over him and took his departure much affected.

"And so was I," writes Babar frankly. Doubtless he was; and yet before sunset that very day he must have been out on the hillside, possibly hunting for new tulips in this new country; for he descried a horseman making his way rapidly up the valley.

A horseman!

Within half-an-hour, without an instant's delay, Babar had backed his lean TurkhomÂn mare and, followed by a leaner troop of such friends as still clung to him (KÂsim and Nevian-GokultÂsh of course amongst the number) was galloping for MarghinÂn (the place where they remove the stone from apricots and put in chopped almonds!). For a message had been sent by the governor of the town to say he was ready to give it up to its rightful owner, and would hope for forgiveness for past offences.

It was then sunset, and MarghinÂn lay more than a hundred miles away as the crow flies. All that night till noon next day the little band rode fiercely on. On those wild hills there was no road to speak of; one could but follow the water-courses as the streams sought their level. At noon next day they drew bridle for the first time. They had not come far, or fast, yet so hard had been the way that their horses needed rest. Twelve hours to give them a chance, and also, in the close valley of Khojend to secure night time for the first part of the march, and they were off again; this time to let sunrise pass to sunset and sunset pass to night before they again drew rein in the grey dawn. Drew rein and looked at each other doubtfully. Yet their goal lay not four miles ahead of them, a shadowy hill crowned by a fort and scarce seen in the half light.

But the doubt was this:

They had ridden for forty-eight hours up hill and down dale, over breakneck precipices and roaring torrents, without ever considering that they had no real warranty for so doing!

The Governor of the town was one who was known to stickle at no crime. With what confidence then could they unconditionally put themselves in his power?

So at least urged Nevian-GokultÂsh. Others joined in, and Babar, ever reasonable, saw cogency in the doubt, and ordered a halt for consideration.

Out in the dawn, the horses, heads down, taking a nibble of grass between heaving breaths, the sweat running down from their polished backs, the tired troopers, too tired to dismount, arguing pros and cons wearily, until Babar rising in his stirrups, showed tall, straight, strong, commanding.

"Gentlemen!" he said. "Our reflections are not without foundation, but we have been too late in making them. We have now ridden three nights and two days without sleep or rest. Neither horse nor man has strength left. There is no possibility of retreating, since there is no place of safety to which we could retreat. Having come so far we must proceed. Therefore let us go forward remembering that nothing happens save by the will of God. Right turn, gentlemen! Forward!"

And forward it proved to be from that moment. MarghinÂn his, the country people, disgusted with the late usurpers, crowded round their old young King.

Of course Grandmother IsÂn-daulet was in at the finish with her horde of two thousand wild Moghul horsemen; who nevertheless did good, if barbarous, service at Âkshi, where treachery met with its just reward. For the Moghuls, stripping their horses, rode barebacked into the stream and sabred the escaping traitors in their boats.

So the peach trees had not shed their blossoms before, by the Grace of the most High (and many real fine fights) Babar recovered his paternal kingdom, of which he had been deprived for two years.

Two years!

He could hardly believe it as he rode through on the mantle of lambskins between the fort of AndijÂn and the river, where not so long ago he had been playing leap-frog when first King-ship came to him.

"Nevian-GokultÂsh!" he cried suddenly, "an thou lovest me! off from thy horse and give me a back like a kind soul. I must leap to my kingdom once more!"

He stood there laughing, the embodiment of boyish youth and energy; forgetful of past troubles, eager to enjoy life.

"Ul-la-la!" shouted some of the nobles catching the spirit of the thing and throwing themselves from their horses.

So leap Babar did, not over Nevian only, but over half-a-score or more of the friends of his adversity including KÂsim who nearly tumbled over with laughter and joy.

And the young King, as he once more cast himself face upwards on the soft furry little blobs of blossom amid a chorus of applause, felt that the whole world was splendid indeed.

CHAPTER VII

"There is no use in talking," quoth IsÂn-daulet decisively. "Send the trays to Ayesha Begum, my daughter, and prepare the wedding comestibles. It has been high time, these two years back, that Zahir-uddin Mahomed got himself married, but of a truth there was not the wherewithal. One cannot marry out of a basket. But now all is smooth, so send for the bride. God grant she be not so unwilling as the groom."

And in truth Babar, seated on the floor, of course, between his grandmother and his mother, looked far from happy. His hands lean, supple, strong, hung over his grasshopper knees, and his head--small for the rest of his body--had not its usual frank bearing.

"I am not unwilling," protested the young man; "Lo! it has to be done, that I know. 'Tis the duty of Kings to marry and have sons; but, see you, I have no experience at all; indeed I have never been so circumstanced as either to hear or witness any words expressive of the amorous passion, and I have never seen my betrothed since I was five."

"God forbid!" ejaculated the KhÂnum piously.

"But how then can I love her?" protested Babar; "'tis not like Dearest-One and Cousin BaisanghÂr--"

A shriek of outrage drowned what he would have said. Not that either of the two good ladies really felt shocked, but that in dealing with Babar they held it wiser to adhere to the strictly conventional; otherwise, heaven only knew if he would not go off at a tangent as Dearest-One had done. Poor Dearest-One on whom the blow of uttermost fate had fallen at last. For a terrible tale had come to AndijÂn but a month before, snuffing out the lamps of festival like a dust-storm at a wedding. For who could rejoice when they thought of a poor young prince who was nobody's enemy but his own, like BaisanghÂr, strangled with a bowstring by the orders of the miserable and infidel-like wretch, worthless, contemptible, without birth or talents, reputation or wisdom, Khosrau ShÂh? Babar had been beside himself with rage, and had expended every known epithet on the murderer, who though he prayed regularly, was black-hearted and vicious, of mean understanding, slender talents, faithless and a traitor. A man who for the sake of the short and fleeting pomp of this vain world had done to death the sweetest prince, the son of his old benefactor, in whose service he had been and by whom he had been patronised and protected. Thus rendering himself accursed of God, abhorred of men, and worthy of shame and execration till the judgment day. Perpetrating his crimes too for the sake of trivial enjoyment, and, despite his power and place, not having the spirit to face a barn-door chicken!

The young man had poured all this and much more into his sister's ears, hoping to comfort her, but she had only turned her face to the wall, and wept.

Strange, indeed, were women-folk; she had been so composed when she herself renounced him, but now that Death had stepped in she was all tears.

The thought of her weeping brought him a quick excuse. "Anyhow," he remarked, with evident relief, "there can be no weddings yet awhile; my sister is not in condition for festivals."

IsÂn-daulet sniffed. "Sisters are not indispensables to a marriage. So be good boy, Babar, and listen to reason. Do I not ever advise thee to thy benefit?"

"Not ever," retorted the young King sulkily; "thou did'st advise me to set my promise aside and let thy cursed Moghuls and others plunder those I had sworn to protect."

"Not plunder, boy!" replied the old lady shrilly, "but to resume their own property."

"I care not," said Babar sternly, and rising to go; "I say I was wrong to yield. 'Twas senseless, to begin with, to exasperate so many men with arms in their hands. And then--Lo! grandam--I was precipitate, and in affairs of state many things that appear reasonable at first sight require to be well weighed and considered in a hundred different lights ere orders are given. I shall have trouble over that yet."

He stalked away in dignified fashion, and his mother sighed. "He grows a man, indeed. 'Tis time he married; but I wonder will she be good daughter to me?"

"She will be good granddaughter to me, that I'll warrant me," retorted IsÂn-daulet viciously. She would stand no nonsense from young chits.

So the marriage went on, and Babar performed his part of it with grave politeness and propriety. He wore his wedding garments with a difference, and when he sat beside his bride for the first time, holding her hand and repeating the words after the officiating KÂzi he felt quite a thrill. In fact he would like to have squeezed the little hand he held, only it was so covered with rings and gew-gaws that he was afraid of hurting it. Altogether the fateful she looked rather small; but distinctly fetching--though of course he could not see her face, in her veil of jasmine blossoms. They smelt, however, rather sickly.

That was in fact all that he vouchsafed to Dearest-One who, late in the evening, slipped in, dressed in white from head to foot, to wish her darling brother happiness.

"I would she smelt of violets instead," he said thoughtfully; "dost think, Dearest-One, it could have been the jasmine perfume and not the sweets that made me sick when I was five?"

And Dearest-One laughed; a laugh with a sob in it, and said to her mother ere she returned to her House-of-Rest:

"He is not fond of her, see you?"

"God forbid!" snapped IsÂn-daulet tartly. "Lo! he will love her when she is the mother of his son."

And Dearest-One was silent; that might be; though she doubted it. But for the present she was right. Babar was not in love; what is more he was shy.

The KhÂnum, his mother, who found her town-bred, mincing and thoroughly amiable daughter-in-law quite an amusing distraction, began by rallying him on his bashfulness; but as the first period of his married life went on, bringing a decrease of such affection as he had had, and a corresponding increase of shyness, raillery turned to tears, then to anger, until the gentle lady, outraged by her son's behaviour, would scold him with great fury and send him off like a criminal to visit his wife.

Babar had, however, some excuse for his lack of interest. Marriage had come to him in the very moment when he needed all his vitality to keep his newly-recovered throne. What he had said to his grandmother concerning his overprecipitate permission for modified plunder had been true. The inconsiderate order, issued without sufficient foresight had caused commotions and mutinies.

The Moghuls, still dissatisfied, had marched off in a huff; good riddance of bad rubbish, as Babar said, though he chafed inwardly at not having been able to control them amicably. Still the Moghul Horde had ever been the authors of every kind of mischief and devastation. Five separate times had they mutinied against him; and not only against him--that might have pointed to incompatibility of temper on his part--but against every one in authority, especially their own KhÂns.

It was in the breed. True was the verse:

Thank God! he was no Moghul; he was TurkhomÂn born and bred!

Before winter came on, indeed, the position of affairs had become critical. Half the nobles had sided with young JahÂngir who still claimed the throne, and fighting was general all over the valley of FerghÂna. To shut himself up in the town of AndijÂn for the winter months would only be to leave the enemy free to ravage the country outside. He therefore chose a spot on the skirts of the hills and cantooned his army there. A pleasant spot with good cover for game! An excellent sporting ground, in fact, containing plenty of mountain goats, antlered stags, and wild hogs. In the smaller jungle, too, were excellent jungle fowl and hares.

Then, when such sport palled, there were always the foxes, which possessed more fleetness than those of any other place. Babar rode a-hunting every two or three days while he remained in those winter quarters, and regaled himself on the jungle fowl, which were very fat. Keeping an eye all the time, however, on the enemy's movements, and guarding AndijÂn, where the KhÂnum and old IsÂn-daulet appeared to have forgotten wars and war's alarms in something more cognate to their woman's hearts; something that was almost too delightful to be true.

Babar, when he first heard of the delightful prospect, was all that could be desired. Affectionate, overjoyed, proud. What else could he be when his mother hung round his neck hysterically, and even Dearest-One's pale cheeks flushed at the future.

"He shall be my son as well as yours, brotherling," she said. "Lo! I will be his best-beloved aunt. So that settles it, and all silly women's talk about my marrying somebody--does it not, O King!"

And Babar, as he sat holding his sister's hand as in the old days, saw a vista of happiness before him. It would be delightful. Imagine having a son of his very own! Ayesha Begum could not complain of his coldness on that visit, and he returned to his camp jubilant.

But the knowledge of what was to come, made him restless. Of what use was an heir, unless he was heir to something tangible? FerghÂna, divided against itself, was no permanent position for either claimant.

But what of Samarkand? There, his cousin Ali (who had no claim) had just beaten Weis, his younger brother who had a claim, doubtless, through his mother: but after his, Babar's, since she was the younger daughter.

He sat on the snowy slopes waiting for bara-singha, or bear, and ciphered it out; he came back to camp and talked it over with KÂsim and the nobles.

"Praise be to God!" said the old swashbuckler, "we may see some fine fighting once again."

They were to see more than they had bargained for; since, when with the advancing spring Babar and his army arrived before Samarkand it was to find that they were pitted, not against the weakling Ali and his half-hearted troops, but against the great Usbek raider, ShaibÂni KhÂn, who, God knows why or wherefore, had attacked BokhÂra, taken it, marched on to Samarkand, taken it by the treachery of a woman, and was now there in undisputed possession. Babar felt that to attack the position overtly with his small force was madness. But what of a surprise? The Usbek horde were strangers. Babar himself had been beloved, during his short reign of a hundred days. If once he could find himself within the walls, the people of Samarkand might declare in his favour. At any rate they would not fight for the Usbek. That was certain.

It was worth a trial. But those who were to attempt the forlorn hope must be picked men, and there must be no attacking force before the city. That would put the garrison on the alert.

In the meantime he would go to the mountains; one thought clearer in high places.

Summer was nigh on, ere preliminaries were settled, and Babar with his picked band, ready for swift attempt, stood on the heights of YÂr-Ailak once more. Above him, unseen in the darkness of the moonless night was the flower-carpeted alp where Dearest-One's face watched the stars wheel. The Heft-Aurang, the seven thrones, showed in ordered array on the purple velvet of the night. Was one of them kept vacant for him, he wondered, or had BaisanghÂr's poor ghost found it? Babar's mind was ever full of such whimsical thoughts; they came to him, unasked, making his outlook on life many-facetted, many-hued, like the iridescent edge which had set a halo round all things in the Crystal Bowl.

The future seemed thus glorified to him as he sat looking out over the unseen city in the valley beyond.

His nobles, his comrades, were sitting round him, revelling over the camp fire; holding a sort of sacramental feast before the dangerous surprise.

"Come!" cried Babar, turning, a light on his face brighter than the firelight; "let us have a bet on when we shall take Samarkand. To-night, to-morrow or never!"

"To-night!" cried Nevian-GokultÂsh and the others followed suit.

Half-an-hour afterwards they were in their saddles, low-bowed upon their peaks, light scaling ladders slung alongside, riding for all they were worth. Now or never! The time was ripe. ShaibÂni KhÂn himself, lulled in security, away on a marauding expedition, the garrison unalarmed, confident.

It was midnight when they halted in the Pleasure-ground before the walls of Samarkand. Here Babar detached eighty of his best men. They were, if possible, to scale the wall noiselessly by the Lovers' Cave--most deserted portion of the fortifications,--make their way silently to the Turquoise Gate, overpower the guard and open the doors.

Babar himself, with the remainder of his men was to ride up to the Gate and be ready to force their way in.

How still the night was! The stars how bright! The Seven Thrones wheeling in their ordered array to the dawn. What had Fate ordered in his life? Babar, waiting, his hand gripped on his sword-hilt in the dark way of the Gate, listened eagerly for a sound. The horses' hoofs, deadened by enswathing felt, had made no sound, the very chink of steel on steel had not been heard. All was silent as the grave.

What did Fate hold in store? Hark, a sentry's sleepy call: "What of the hour of the night?"

What, indeed?

Then in one second, tumult, uproar, a clashing of sword on sword.

"The Gate! Open the Gate!" shouted Babar.

A swift bombardment of dull blows--stones, anything on iron bolts and bars. A shiver, a sudden yielding, and the wide doors swung open.

An instant after Babar was through the gateway, King of Samarkand. He knew it, even as he galloped on through the sleeping streets to the citadel. A drowsy shopkeeper or two, roused by the clatter, looked out from the shops apprehensively, then offered up prayers of thanksgiving. So, by ones and twos, the city woke to relief and gratitude. By dawn the hunted Usbeks had disappeared; dead or fled. And the chief people of the town, bringing such offerings of food ready dressed as they had at hand were flocking to the Great Arched Hall of the Palace, to do homage to their new King, and congratulate him on his success.'

Babar received them with his usual frank, simple dignity. For nearly a hundred and forty years, he said, Samarkand had been the capital of his family. A foreign robber, none knew whence, had seized the kingdom unrighteously. But Almighty God had now restored it, and given him back his plundered and pillaged country which he would proceed to put in order.

He did it to his heart's content! He was now nineteen, the birth of his son was nigh at hand, and all must be ready for the expected heir.

So the next month or two passed in preparations and congratulations. Babar, who felt the strength of the pen as well as that of the sword, wrote endless letters to the neighbouring princes and chiefs, assuring them of his favour, and requesting like return from them. These he despatched duly accredited with rose-scent and gold-dust and brocaded bags; but not so many came back as went out.

MoghulistÂn was slow to recognise the value of peaceful persuasion, and looked askance at the young general who could surprise so wily a foe as ShaibÂni KhÂn and yet think it worth while to write missives like a scrivener.

But one letter came which brought the young King unmixed delight; for it was from the incomparable Ali-ShÎr at KhorasÂn; an incomparable letter without one word astray; a pure pleasure from start to finish. The young King answered it boldly: even daring so far as to write a Turkhi couplet of his own composing on the outside thereof; a Turkhi couplet that was not half-bad; for he was growing to be a man in mind as well as body.

So all things went merry as a marriage bell. His grandmother, his mother, and the mother of his expected heir, arrived by slow marches from AndijÂn and were lodged in the Birthplace and Deathplace of Kings, the Green-Palace. And Dearest-One came too in the white robes of a sainted canoness, eager to take up her position of aunt-in-ordinary; a position of honour with the ChagatÂi family. Babar himself had half-a-dozen or so such Benificent-Ladies ready for all festivities, all condolences.

So, one hot night, he found himself looking distractedly at the moon in a balcony of the women's apartments.

Hurrying feet and whisperings had gone on, it seemed to him, for hours.

But these feet did not hurry; they lagged.

"A daughter! a miserable daughter!" said his mother's voice, full of tears. "Lo! I wonder Ayesha could think of such a thing ... It is unpardonable."

"Let us say no more," put in IsÂn-daulet. "When a woman disgraces herself, the less said the better. We will get thee a more dutiful wife, sonling."

Even Dearest-One's face was downcast utterly.

"A daughter!" echoed Babar and paused. Then he said eagerly: "May I not see it, motherling?--'Tis my first child, anyhow."

And they showed it him, a naked new-born baby wrapped in a cotton quilt.

"It looks old; as if it had been born a long time," he said reflectively; then his fine, strong, young hand touched the tiny crumpled fingers tentatively. "Lo! they are like little worms," he said and laughed aloud suddenly, a gay young laugh. "She is not bad, my daughter. I will call her 'Glory of Women.'"

And almost every day he would find time to go in to the women's apartments and look at her.

But, after a month or forty days, the little Glory of Womanhood went to share the Mercy of God.

She was his first child, and at the time he was just nineteen.

CHAPTER VIII

Fate had called a halt in Babar's life. A court had once more gathered round him, and, as King of Samarkand, a city of colleges and culture, this was of different stamp from that of AndijÂn. It occupied itself with other things than the edge of a sword-blade or the merits of a polo-ball.

"Lo!" said Mulla BinÂi the poet, his voice lubricated with artificial adulation to extreme oiliness, "I have at last found fitting memorial for the magnificent victory of the King in these poor words:

The horrid doggerel, with its inlay of numerical letters giving the date of Babar's surprise of Samarkand, was allowed to pass muster in that crowd of flattering courtiers.

Only KÂsim Beg, bluff as he had been from the beginning, said, smartly:

"Good enough, if so be 'tis accurate; but of that, thank God, I know naught; for whilst thou rememberest fine fights by dots and strokes, I keep them by the dents on my good sword."

The old noble disliked BinÂi; he disliked all poets in general; but this one in particular. He knew nothing good of him but his riposte to Ali-ShÎr--who was worth ten of him since he had at least been born a Beg and who, before he was bitten by the mad craze for jingling words, had struck a good few shrewd blows for the right. Besides, he had been author and patron of many useful inventions, and it was not his fault if the gilded youth of HerÂt named every new fashion after him, and when he, in consequence of an earache, bound up his face with a kerchief, bound up theirs also and called it À la mode Ali-ShÎr. Still BinÂi's riposte to the sarcasms which had driven him from HerÂt was a good joke. To order a ridiculous pad for the ass he was to ride and call it the Ali-ShÎr pad! The recollection of it always made good old KÂsim laugh broadly. The humour of it suited his sturdy outlook. An outlook that was disturbed by the jingle-jangle of words and wits that began to arise about his young master. It was all very well, and affairs were doubtless in a most prosperous state. All the same there was no counting on any continuance of fine weather with half-a-dozen claimants to the throne and ShaibÂni-KhÂn close at hand. The Usbek raider was no man to give in because of one reverse; his whole life was war.

So KÂsim frowned at culture, and as Prime-Minister looked to his weapons.

It was not however for many months that his fear came true and ShaibÂni, reinforced, appeared again on the horizon of Babar's world.

But when he did, the young King set aside everything else and buckled on his sword once more with zest. He had been studying military art in his great ancestor Timur's memoirs, and was eager for a pitched battle. No sooner, therefore, did ShaibÂni's hordes show themselves, than the young general marched to meet them, and, over-impatient, precipitated a collision before his own re-enforcements of over five thousand men had time to join him.

But it was his first pitched battle, he was keen as mustard, and had planned it all out on paper beautifully on strategical lines.

And the astronomers were to the fore with a lucky conjunction of stars.

So the right and left wings marched out in orderly array, and wheeled admirably to meet the first attack of their flank. But somehow this separated Babar from his staff of veterans, who possibly did not believe in the virtue of disciplined movements; and though in person he led a dashing and impetuous charge of his centre on the foe, which drove the Usbeks back to the point of rout, ShaibÂni would not accept defeat. He stood firm, despite his officers' advice to withdraw while he could, and continued the wild desert tactics of repeated charges on the enemy's flank, repeated withdrawals to wheel and reform.

And Babar's army, but half-disciplined, divided by conflicting ideals became hopelessly confused. His Moghul troops, refusing to obey orders, reverted to their old habit of killing and plundering, with the result of rout--complete absolute rout.

That night the young leader, stern and calm, despite the ache at his heart for his own broken ideals as well as for the loss of the many Begs of the highest rank, the many admirable soldiers, the many devoted friends who had perished in the action, held a council of war in the citadel as to what had best be done under the circumstances. Capitulation on terms, or unconditional defence?

Belief in their leader and the devotion of the AndijÂn nobles carried the day against the more lukewarm Samarkandis. It was resolved to hold the citadel to the death, to the very last drop of blood; and with vitality renewed by the need for immediate action Babar set to work strengthening the fortifications. Here at any rate he was master; bricks and earth could not disobey orders; they must remain where they were put.

Yet most of the nobles sent away their wives and families secretly. Babar's mother and sister, however, refused to leave their beloved one whose fortunes they had followed for so long through thick and thin. Grandmother IsÂn-daulet, also, remained of course. Her brave old heart rather gloried in the thought of a siege, and with all the hatred of a desert-born ChagatÂi, she hated the Usbek raider who had dared to beat her grandson.

Though on that point she and Babar had many words. He reviling her Moghul horde as the cause of his failure; she asserting it to be his cramping conditions which had prevented the success of the old methods of warfare that had served his fathers well enough.

As for Ayesha Begum she had long since retired in a huff to her own relations, making as her excuse the plea of grief for the death of the little Glory of Womanhood. But Babar knew better. She had not cared at all. Her other plea that he did not love her was more to the purpose. Anyhow it was as well, thought the young husband grimly; she would only have wept and been uncomfortable.

For discomfort was inevitable even from the very beginning of the siege; at any rate for the men. The nightly round of the ramparts alone entailed lack of proper sleep, since but a small portion of them was ridable, the rest had to be done on foot. And so long was the circuit that, starting at dusk, it was dawn before every place had been inspected. Still, even with the small force at his command, Babar kept the foe at bay, though, more than once he had a narrow squeak of it. Once when a feint attack of ShaibÂni's on the Iron-Gate covered a daring escalade at the Needle-makers Gate. An escalade that was all but successful. Four of the attacking party were actually over the wall, dozens of others were swarming up it, when one Kuch-Beg, noble by birth and by nature, caught a glimpse of someone where someone should not be. To draw his sword single-handed as he was, and spring to the attack was the work of an instant. It was an exploit for ever to be cited to his honour, though his ringing war-shout brought three more heroes to his aid. Even so, there were but four against dozens; but furious blows, daredevil recklessness do much, and almost before the nodding guards were roused, the danger was over, the escaladers driven back, to fall a confused heap of ladders and men leaving a dead body or two on the ramparts.

Then KÂsim Beg sallied out again and again to engage the enemy's pickets and returned, bringing heads to set on pikes upon the walls.

For war was war in those days; there was no talk of Red-Crosses and ambulance-wagons.

And yet two women went about inside the fortress, bandaging wounds and applying simples. For the KhÂnum, Babar's mother, could not bear to see pain, and though old IsÂn-daulet sniffed at new fangled ways, asserting that men could but die once and that it was waste of time to tend a common soldier as though he were a noble, she came of a fighting tribe and could give many an inherited recipe for the healing of cuts, the prevention of wound fever. Then Dearest-One despite her youth, had a claim, as one who had renounced the world to freedom for good works; so mother and daughter went about in their close white veils applying the simples which the old woman pounded and compounded, and doing all they could for the brave men who were helping the beloved of their eyes to keep his kingdom. They could do no less; they could do no more; so at least said the KhÂnum, as often in the dark nights the mother and daughter lay awake trembling in each other's arms, listening during an attack or a sally.

Grandmother IsÂn-daulet would fall foul of them for their red eyes.

"When a man comes in to his food," she would say, "reeling from blows at his head or sick at stomach with hunger, 'tis no comfort to him to see tears, or the signs of tears. Thou sayest, daughter, thou can'st do no more for thy son? Then I can. I can make him angry."

And she did: so that Babar went from his breakfast with his soft heart hardened to disdain.

Dearest-One used to admire her grandmother's pluck. Not to care if one hurt the beloved for his good! That was great. And she would wring her hands tight and say to herself: "I told him long ago that there was nothing I would not do for him; but there is nothing, nothing I can do."

So the months dragged by. Harvest came and went without bringing fresh supplies to the beleaguered fortress, and ShaibÂni, cynical, somewhat afraid of his daring young antagonist, withdrew from actual collision, and contented himself with blockade. Starvation would do the work without his aid.

The grain for the horses had already given out; however, while the leaves lasted the mulberry trees and the rose-wood trees in the fortified gardens were stripped and did for fodder. But the winter winds ended this supply, and the shift was made to keep some few horses alive with the rispings of wood moistened with water and sprinkled with salt. A sorry appearance was that of the poor steeds on such miserable fare; but Babar's charger did better, with a daily share of his master's bread; though the big-boned lad could ill spare it. For all alike were on short commons; and they grew shorter day by day. The dying horses were killed and eaten, the donkeys went next--then the cats and dogs. When matters came to this pass, however, night after night men--brave men--began to let themselves down over the wall and make their escape. The haggard young King never knew when he called a council of war, what trusted, what honoured face, might not be absent. Yet still he clung to that last drop of blood. The oath might have been foolish, since, as the ancients said, a fortress can only be maintained by the joint action of head, and feet, and hands; that is to say by generalship, two friendly forces on either side, and a good supply of water and stores as the starting point of all. Still he had made it, and he meant to stick to it. The others might go if they pleased.

"If I could only secure thine and my mother's and my grandmother's safety," he said to Dearest-One--"the other few women also," he added--"though there is little fear for them, they count not enough for harm; and ShaibÂni hath his army well in hand. That is how he scored against me. Those accursed Moghuls of my grandmother's would not obey orders. If they killed a man they plundered him--and what is that, when a turning movement hath been ordered? Ah! it was devilish! devilish!" And the tall, thin, young figure would throw out its arms almost appealingly. For Babar was ever high-strung, and his nerves were going.

He gave himself no rest either. Night and day he was always on the watch. So it did not matter so much to him as to others when ShaibÂni KhÂn, changing his tactics, commenced making the darkness hideous by beating large kettle drums and sounding the alarm. Yet the young King shook his fist over the battlements at his foe, who had now pitched his headquarters tent close to the Lovers' Cave, and said to Dearest-One, "It is not fair, and yet it is! I would do it in his place--and yet I don't know--I don't know!" He was very near the end of his tether, yet his grip was tight as ever and he would sit on the top of the gateway with a crossbow and shoot at everyone and everything living that showed itself.

"I struck a palish white-coloured horse to-day," he said to his sister with a cruel exultant look in the eyes that had always been so tender for God's dumb creatures, "and it fell dead--would it had been a man!"

And Dearest-One turned pale. This was worse than death; worse than anything--anything in the wide, wide world!

She lay face downwards beside her mother that night and thought, and thought, and thought, until the grey dawn came. Then she sat up and looked at her mother sleeping beside her.

Yes! it was best. The plan was worth the trying at any rate; and she would be the only one to suffer.

She lay down again, and laid her head on that gentle, loving, sleeping breast. And the motherly arms, unconscious as they were, closed round her and held her fast until she, too, slept, outwearied. That morning she was closeted with her grandmother for hours, and at the midday meal the old woman's eyes showed red; but Dearest-One's were clear and bright; when the mind is made up there is no use in tears.

The evening was stormy. The bitter east wind swept along the ramparts and drove the dust in blinding clouds into the eyes of all. The very foe ceased from their disturbing shouts of alarm, and on many a post the sentry slept awhile.

Did one at the wicket gate by the Lovers' Cave sleep or did he not; and did the white-robed figure that slipped after dusk through the deserted streets pass out, unseen, to challenge fate in the Usbek leader's camp?

Or did Dearest-One send a message only?

Or was it only chance which the very next morning brought the ultimatum to the haggard young King? Who knows? Certain it is it came.

There was no reason, ShaibÂni wrote, why those who had been brave foes should not be brave friends. None could deny the King of Samarkand's bravery; few would care to deny his own. Why then should they not be friends? A marriage was ever the best way of securing peace. Let Babar therefore give his sister KhanzÂda Begum in lawful marriage to his foe--who, be it said, was in strong enough position to take her--and so form a lasting alliance.

"My sister!" burst out Babar in a fury. "Go back to the savage Usbek ShaibÂni, robber, raider, sir ambassador; and tell him that Zahir-ud-din Mahomed is not his peer--he is his master!"

This was all very well in the saying; it sent the blood, growing a bit sluggish from sheer starvation, flooding to heart and brain; but afterwards when the envoy had gone, and the hungry anxious faces of the few who still remained to him showed bitter disappointment, he leant his head on his hands drearily in the quiet of the women's room, and tried to put himself in the place of those bearded Begs to whom a woman's honour or happiness or indeed affection, was, as a rule, of small account.

He could not, of course, assent; and yet it seemed a pity that he could not.

And while he sat crouched in upon himself, spent and weary, Dearest-One herself came and crouched beside him and laid her pretty head on his shoulder.

"Brother!" she said, "I have heard. Come let us talk it over as in old days. So let me hold thy poor hand as we used to do; for we have ever been friends, Babar-ling--have we not?"

Her voice was calm and steady despite the clamant note of tears that was in every word.

"Talk not of it, sister! I will not have it," he muttered; and his voice was broken, husky. "By God and his prophet! I could strike him dead for the thought that I could be such a cur as even to think of it."

She shrank just for a second. "Many men would think it naught," she said, "but it is because it means much to thee that thou must think."

"I will not think," he cried passionately, "I will not be coerced. I will not be cozened. I, Babar, take the consequence."

He left her, baffled, yet still determined, to return to the charge in a day or two; and in starvation times a day or two means much. So much, that she spoke sternly with finality.

"Wilt thou kill thy mother by thy pride, Babar? Listen! Long years ago I said I would do aught for thee--"

"And I answered I would never ask aught," interrupted her brother hotly; but she went on unheeding:

"And now thou deniest me the right to save thee. I who have so few pleasures. Lo! as thou knowest, my heart is dead for love; and this man--this ShaibÂni--is not all bad--I--I know he is not. Brotherling! women have borne more for love than I shall have to bear maybe--for the man must be kind in a way--for--for if it ended, Babar--he could take me--without marriage--so grandmother says--"

Babar started up with an oath. "So she also is against me!"

Yet in his heart of hearts he knew that the old woman spoke truth. It was generous in ShaibÂni even to offer marriage.

"I will not have it!" he cried. "I will not yield! I would sooner kill thee, myself."

"Thou wilt kill--us all," she said calmly. Then she broke down and clung to him sobbing. "Let it be, brotherling, for my sake. There is so little I can do--let me do this."

The quick tears of understanding ran down his cheeks, but he shook his head and left her.

So, after a day or two, yet another proposition came from ShaibÂni to his brave foe. Babar might go with bare life, taking his womenkind with him if he chose, provided he capitulated utterly and acknowledged he was beaten.

There were parleyings and parleyings and who knows what secret promisings beside, what innocent lies, what heart-broken yielding on Babar's part. At last, protesting vainly that had he had the slightest hope of relief, or had he had another week's stores remaining he would never have listened to either threats or entreaties, he agreed to capitulate for bare life to him and his. His mother, his sister, his grandmother, these three must share his freedom. The others must take their chance of horses, or remain, unharmed. Grandmother IsÂn-daulet, however, flatly refused to come. She was too old, she said, to be cocked up on a horse for days. She was not afraid. Thrice, already, when she was young and good-looking she had fallen into the enemies' hands and had been unmolested--save once and how that business ended Babar knew. So, being now wrinkled and undesirable she would just remain and mayhap give ShaibÂni a piece of her mind. So her horse had better go to Mingilek-GokultÂsh who was perchance over good-looking. It was ever best not to put temptation in men's way. Besides Dearest-One might like to have her foster-sister with her. It was convenient to have some woman one could trust beside one in dangerous times.

As the old woman spoke, she held her granddaughter by the hand, and her old fingers tightened themselves on the young ones with a grip firm as steel, soft as a caress. And Dearest-One stooped and kissed the old face on the lips.

So by midnight all was ready for the preconcerted escape. The few sorry horses left in the citadel were standing saddled, the enemy's pickets, it is to be presumed, were looking another way. Babar, fierce, miserable, helped his mother to her pad and settled the stirrups for her. He could scarcely see for the hot tears held back so angrily in his eyes. He could scarcely speak for the hard-held breath that seemed to choke him.

Defeated, flying for his life--No! not for his own only; for theirs also!

He gave a glance round at his party. "Is everyone there? Is everyone ready?"

And from the midst of the little crowd clustering round the fugitives with sobs and tears a voice came clearly:

"Yea! brother! I am ready."

It was Dearest-One's voice. That must be she leaning from her horse to whisper a word to old IsÂn-daulet who stood waving farewells.

"Then in God's name let us begone, and end the business," he shouted fiercely, leapt to his charger, dug spurs to its flanks and was off careless of disturbance. He had sold himself for the sake of those who loved him, man and woman alike; but the blackness as of death was before his eyes; he could not think; he could do nothing but dig spurs to his horse, and ride on recklessly.

And the night itself was dark as death; he had to rein up amid the great branches of the Soyd Canal, and with difficulty rallied his party to the right road. Yet, still entangled in the intricacies of the irrigated fields, there was time for no other thought save that of getting as far from Samarkand as possible before the dawn. Since though the Usbek leader himself had given order for free pass, his followers, still less his allies, were not to be trusted.

The sky was grey with coming day before they reached the comparative safety of a wild valley set amid encircling hills. Here Babar called a minute's halt to breathe the horses, and for the first time turned to take stock of those who followed him.

His keen eye took in his mother's veiled form. But that bundle like a sack of corn, that crumpled heap like a withered rose leaf--neither of these were Dearest-One? She rode! In a flash, a sense of pride at her upright carriage on her horse came to him, even as a suffocating leap of his heart made him speechless for a second. An awful fear seized him. He knew, and yet he would not know what had happened.

"KhanzÂda Begum!" he muttered hoarsely. "Where--where is she?"

No one spoke, and anger--hopeless, helpless anger and grief kept him silent. Then someone said almost fearfully:

"Mayhap in the night time--in the darkness--"

"It is a lie!" burst out Babar. "It is a lie!--I have been tricked!" Then something of the innate truth that was ever in his soul made him pause. He ought to have known--he ought to have guessed. Foes were not usually so generous, and he saw himself not altogether free from blame. "I have tricked myself--I ought to have known," he burst out. "I--oh! may God's curse light on everyone--everyone--"

So he stood, his face turned towards the distant city for a moment, then with a reckless laugh he loosed the rein on his horse's neck and threw his arms above his head.

"Come on!" he shouted as the horse bounded forward. "We are free! Let us ride to hell--to hell and damnation!" And his laughter echoed back, bringing terror to his mother's heart.

"He is beside himself," she cried. "After him, KÂsim--for God's sake keep him from harm."

But KÂsim and Kambar-Ali his squire, were already at the gallop, and the sound of their horses' feet followed Babar as he fled.

From what?

From everything in the wide world. From anger, love, remorse, helpless grief, even from resolve not to be beaten. His nerves were unstrung; for the moment his one thought was escape.

But only for a moment. The sound of those galloping hoofs behind him brought immediate self-control, immediate grip on kingly dignity.

He turned back on his saddle to cast a word that would re-instate him in sanity to those following fools.

"A race!" he cried gaily. "Come on! A race let it be!--Ten dinars ..."

But even as he spoke, he overbalanced. Perhaps he felt giddy, perhaps the girths on his starving horse were all too slack. Anyhow the saddle turned with him and he fell; fell clear on his head.

He was up again, however, ere they reached him, standing unsteadily with dazed eyes, passing his hand gently backwards and forwards over his brow.

"What was it all about?" he murmured cheerfully. "I've clean forgotten it all." And he had.

He mounted again after a minute and rode on; but the memory of that night had gone out of his mind for ever and aye.

CHAPTER IX

Think, in this battered Caravanserai
Whose doorways are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his Hour or two and went his way.

Omar Khayyam.

Those first few days of despair were as a dream. The world and all that is in it showed to Babar's eyes like a phantasy of sleep. He lay and rested at a friendly village, passing from the extreme of famine to plenty; from an estate of danger and calamity to peace and ease. The nice fat flesh, the bread of fine flour well baked, the sweet melons and excellent grapes in great abundance, all these made him feel sensibly the pleasures of peace and plenty; for enjoyment after suffering, abundance after want, come with an increased relish and afford a more exquisite delight. It was the first time in his life that he had passed from the injuries of his enemies and the pressure of actual hunger to the ease of security, and he revelled in it like the wholesome-hearted, and, for the time, mindless creature that he was.

But memory of a sort came back to him after a few days and he grew restless; so they marched on. And as he rode over the hills or walked, leading his mother's pony, discontent began once more to leaven his glad content. The world in these lower lying districts was beautiful in the early springtide, but there was something more in life than mere beauty. There was something else needed to make it splendid.

"I will go back to where we were in the White Mountains," he said one day. "I was happy there and so was Dearest-One."

It was the first time he had mentioned his sister's name, and his mother looked at him anxiously. But he said no more. Nature was dealing in kindly fashion with him and bringing memory back by slow degrees.

But at BishÂgher, where they halted a few days, it was like to have been otherwise, for there they came across an old duenna of Babar's mother who having been left behind in Samarkand because of the scarcity of horses, had, nothing daunted, trudged after her mistress on foot. The two women sobbed on each other's necks, while the one told and the other listened to the piteous tale of a marriage, which after all had not been so bad as it might have been, because of old IsÂn-daulet's masterful spirit. But they said nothing to the menfolk about it all. It was as well that their boy should hear as few details as possible.

And here--the first possible place for news since those long months of siege--tidings came of family deaths at Tashkend. It was fourteen years since Babar's mother had been there and seen her people, and now, when they were hopeless, homeless, and when, moreover, she had her old governess to serve her once more, the time seemed fitting for a visit.

So she went, and for the first time for many years Babar was left alone without any hostages to fortune.

And one of the first things he did with his liberty was to climb a certain hill all set with flowers, which he and his sister had climbed one spring day in the past. The gentians were as blue, the primulas as pink as ever, and the mosaic of forget-me-nots and yellow crowsfoot lay almost inconceivably bright as ever. The blue sky, grazing ground for fleecy white flocks of clouds, stretched away beyond the hills to that faint bluer line of distant Samarkand.

All was as it had been. And the green enamel frame set with jewels, like flowers, lay on the transparent ice where she had put it. He had not noticed that before; one could see through the slab--see green grass-blades, and a half opened flower bud that had been held in chill prison for years and years and years--It was quaint, utterly, when her face, her portrait had gone! The rain had washed it away. The vellum on which it had been painted lay white as snow.

Yes! quaint utterly. The icy grip had kept its hold, the warm sunshine had let slip its prize. He sat down idly, his head resting in his hands.

Yes! her face had gone! What matter now if there was place or grace beside it for another? Poor BaisanghÂr! and poor--infinitely poorer Dearest-One! For the first time the full meaning of what had happened came over him; he turned round passionately, hid his face among the flowers and cried like a child.

Ishk and ashk! Love and tears. How little divided them. So the thought of his dead, crippled cousin came to him and the memory of that vivid, fate-defying face stood between him and despair. The Crystal Bowl! Yes! he would laugh as he quaffed: life had brought him strange adventures; let her bring more! He was ready for them--quite ready, in his manhood, to take what the years might hold. For boyhood had gone. That had capitulated with Samarkand.

He did not formulate all this clearly; he simply felt it. Felt the keen joy in life come back to him as he sat up once more and looked out over God's beauties with still swimming eyes; and the tears were magnifying glasses!

A quaint conceit that might be worked up into a couplet or perchance a quatrain. BaisanghÂr would have done it finely: he worked well on such finniken fancies. But he had been wrong in the verses he had written on the back of the enamel frame. Were they there still? Aye! they had been protected from the tears of rain.

He read the lines over, feeling as he read them that there was something in them that lacked. So, as he felt, words came to him; for he was born with that artistic temperament which cannot help trading on its own most sacred emotions; perhaps because such natures see vaguely that individualism is a snare to the soul, that all things worth recording are part of a Greater Personality than their own. And the outcome of feeling and words ran thus:--

He jumped up feeling quite pleased with himself, for they were the first verses in that measure he had ever composed!

After this when he was wandering barefoot over hill and dale, he would sit down when he found some pleasant spot and string rhymes together; for he was in a backwater, mentally and bodily. For twenty years he had battled with Fate over trivialities; since what, after all, were FerghÂna and Samarkand and HissÂr? Only tiny little bits of God's earth. He was beginning to be a trifle weary of it all, to long for a larger horizon. So he sent off on the pretext of getting news, the few followers who had remained with him while he, Nevian-GokultÂsh, and another wandered farther and farther, higher and higher up the White Mountains until they reached the Roof-of-the-World. And there they lodged awhile in the felt tents of a shepherd and lived on sheeps'-milk, cheese and buckwheat-cakes. Their host was a man of some eighty years; but his mother was still alive, and of extreme age, being at this time no less than one hundred and eleven years old, and in full possession of her faculties. Indeed, the circumstances of the great Timur's invasion of India remained fresh in her memory owing, doubtless, to her having been in her youth greatly interested in one who had been in his army.

She was a hale old woman, smoke-dried yet apple-cheeked, who loved to hear herself talk, especially when the tall good-looking young stranger sat at her feet, fixing his hazel eyes that were at once so sad and so merry on her whirling pirn as she twisted the brown wool for the blankets.

How it whirled, and leaped, and spun, as the withered old hand jerked the thread! So the Hand of Fate jerked men's lives, setting them spinning like tops into the shadows, out into the firelight again; always, always spinning!

"So the Great KhÂn was feeding his dogs, being in those days infidel, when Shaikh JumÂl-ud-din the divine came to him. 'Am I better than this dog?' quoth Timur, 'or is he better than I?' And the Shaikh smiled. 'If the King has faith he is better than his dog; but if he has no faith, then is his dog better than he, since the dog believes in a master.' So the Great KhÂn said the Creed immediately."

"Wah!" murmured the circle of shepherds; but Babar would press for tales of the Great Invasion. And sometimes the old lady would begin at the very beginning, and tell how Timur's soldiers, imitating their leader, would make their left arms straight as the letter "I" and their right arms crooked as a "K" and so write death in the blood of their enemies. How they let fly their arrows as the moon lets fly shooting stars so that the blood-sodden hillsides showed like a drift of red tulips. Or she would drone on--it was a long story--over the "Battle of the Mire," where the enemy not having strength to fight, sought help from the magic rain-stone, so that though the sun was in the Warrior, a host of dark clouds suddenly filled the sky. The thunder resounded, the lightnings flashed, the water descended from the eyes of the stars until the voice of Noah was heard praying a second time for deliverance from the Deluge. Then the beasts of the field swam like fishes, the skin of the horses' bellies adhered to the crust of the earth. The feathers of the arrows damped off, their notches came out, neither men nor horses could move by reason of the rain ...

So she would maunder on until Babar would say impatiently:

"Get on to India, mother! I would fain be there myself."

And he would hardly listen as she, once more beginning at the very beginning, would detail the eight-hundred-thousand men, provided with rations for seven years and each accompanied with two milch-kine and ten milch-goats, so that when stores were exhausted they might live on milk, and when milk dried up they could convert the animals themselves into provisions.

It was all doubtless very wise of Timur--God rest his soul!--who was ever great on the commissariat; but he, Babar, preferred the laconic remark in his great ancestor's autobiography, "The princes of India were at variance with one another. Resolved to make myself master of the Indian empire. Did so."

It was however the more intimate personal experiences which the old woman held by virtue of that dead "interest" of hers, which fired Babar's imagination; but these fragments of a half-forgotten past were not always to be got at. The long years of common round and daily task had overlaid them; it needed a subtle touch upon the instrument to make it vibrate once more. But Babar found a key. There was a certain TurkhomÂn ballad called "The Maid-of-the-Spring," which invariably unlocked the old woman's memory. So, often, as they sat over the camp fire at night, Babar, smiling to himself, would say, "A song, a song! Let us sing 'The Maid-of-the-Spring' together once more, grandmother! There is none sings it as thou dost."

Which was true! Still the toneless treble of the old voice whining away like the fine whing of a mosquito did not sound so bad against the rich baritone. And the youngest maiden could not have nodded and becked more, or looked more arch. And perhaps the old heart beat as quickly as a young one; such things do not go by age.

And this is what they sang in somewhat monotonous antiphon:

He.
Maid of the Spring! I'm thirsty! I pray
A drop of water! I must away.
God bless you, my girl! And don't be slow!
Give me a drink and let me go.

She.
I don't give drinks to strange young men
Who come a-swaggering down the glen;
Naught you'll get from my pitcher to-day,
Drink for yourself and go your way.

He.
Maid of the Spring! I cannot alight,
I'm far too tired! I'm wearied quite!
I haven't time! God bless you, my dear!
Give me a drink--I can't stay here.

She.
The birds sing sweet in the spring, they say,
It's sweeter still when I tune my lay,
But tired man should sleep in his bed--
Farewell! God's blessing be on your head.

He.
Give me some water, you pretty dear!
If I'd only time, you need not fear.
My darling! a drink from that stoup of thine,
Be it water or be it wine.

She.
Many men travel along this way,
All are thirsty but none can stay.
Take my pitcher and drink if you will,
A thirsty man must have his fill.

He.
Your brows are arched by a pen, I swear,
Your teeth are pearls--I will treat you fair,
Get down from my horse and wait an hour.
Give me your lips, my sweet, my flower.

She.
Roses and violets grow our groves,
No one may pluck them but he who loves.
My brother has slaves, and sticks a-main;
Drink and be off--it soon will rain!

He.
Darlingest dear! let it storm or rain,
My wide felt cloak shall shelter us twain.
Pitcher and all, leap up and ride,
We'll find a kiss at the water's side.

She.
My love! my love! have you come at last?
Drop the pitcher and hold me fast!
There are my lips before we fly
Out to a new world--you and I.

"And now for India!" Babar would cry when the applause was over. "I want to hear about the size of it, and the fruit and flowers of it, and all about it. See you, grandmother, begin and tell me of the young woman thy man met at Lahore--then thou wilt remember to a nicety!"

So the summer passed, until old IsÂn-daulet arriving from Samarkand with news of Dearest-One, set Babar's mind a-jogging once more over his enemy ShaibÂni. But there was nothing to be done in winter time: such a bitter cold winter, too. More than one man died of it, and even Babar himself admitted that, after diving sixteen times in swift succession into a river that was only unfrozen in the middle by reason of its swift current, the extreme chilliness of the water quite penetrated his bones; as well it might.

Then early spring brought a great grief which gave pause to energy. Nevian-GokultÂsh was done to death, by a scoundrel who was jealous of Babar's affection for him, and who had the temerity to say that faithful creature had fallen over a precipice when he was drunk. Nevian, who adhered so strictly to the law of IslÂm! Nevian, who had always sided for sobriety, who had been to the full as urgent as old KÂsim Beg against a King giving himself up to wine. Babar, helpless to follow the murderer, felt deeply the death of his playmate in childhood, the companion of his boyhood. There were few persons for whose loss he would have grieved so much or so long. For a week or ten days, he thought of nothing else and the unbidden tears were ever in his eyes.

After this, a great restlessness set in, fostered by old IsÂn-daulet, whose whole life had been one long succession of battles and murders and sudden deaths, and whose belief in Moghul troops never wavered. Why, she suggested, not go to his uncles the KhÂns at Tashkend? His mother had been ill; she would like to see him once more. And if his tongue was sufficiently careful amongst his thirty-two teeth, he might get substantial help.

"For what?" gloomed Babar--"to get back Âkshi and lose AndijÂn or get AndijÂn and lose Âkshi? 'Tis all one in the end."

"Not the fine fighting, child!" replied the old lady craftily. "That is the same, be it in Gehannum or Bihisht." (Hell or Heaven.)

That was undoubtedly true; and there was no good to be gained by rambling from hill to hill as he had been doing.

So, once more, the young adventurer gathered together a very scanty band of followers; for old KÂsim Beg, who till then had never left him, had come to words with IsÂn-daulet over these same Moghuls, and refused to accompany him.

"I say not, sire," remonstrated the wise old soldier, "that these men are bad soldiers for me; but they are for the Most Exalted, who has ideas of discipline. Besides, I care not to risk my own neck for a chance. In obedience to the Most Exalted's commands I beheaded quite a number of these men in the last campaign, for marauding. Wherefore, therefore, should I go amongst their mourning relatives? I will come if there be fighting. Then there is no leisure and little desire for private revenge; blood can be let anywhere and one corpse is as good as another."

So KÂsim went with his immediate adherents towards HissÂr; and Babar set off to Tashkend with rather a heavy heart. In a somewhat didactic mood also, for resting for a day or two beside a spring in the lower hills, he caused a verse to be inscribed on a stone slab which formed one side of the well where the water gushed in from the hill above, to disappear into the earth when it had run through a masonry trough.

He was not, however, at home in the rubÂi, as he had not, at that time, studied with much attention the style and phraseology of poetry.

Indeed, one of his first actions on reaching Tashkend was to submit some of his compositions to the KhÂn who had pretensions to taste, and who, moreover, wrote verses himself; though his odes, to be sure, were rather deficient in manner and substance. The younger poetaster, however, did not get either explicit or satisfactory criticism, and came to the conclusion that his uncle had no great skill in poetic diction. He did not know, for instance, that in the Turkhi language it was allowable, by poetic licence, to interchange certain letters for the sake of the rhyme.

"He will think thee a nincompoop," stormed IsÂn-daulet. "Why did'st not show him thy sword play?"

"He may see that ere long," quoth Babar, grimly, and went straight away to write the first ghazel of six Couplets he ever composed.

He was quite pleased with this effusion and sang it at a festive party soon after with great gusto; but the next morning he found that the golden clasp of his girdle had been stolen by one of the appreciative audience!

Moghuls again!

CHAPTER X

So, vaguely thought Babar as life went on dully with the family party at Tashkend. Most of his servants had left from absolute want; one, or at most two attendants were all that he could muster when he went to pay his compliments to the KhÂn, his uncle. Once, indeed, he accompanied the latter on a foray; but it was a useless sort of expedition. He, the KhÂn, took no part, beat no enemy; he simply went out and came back again.

The young man spent much of his time with his mother who was convalescing but slowly; and she naturally, after so many years of absence, saw much of her sisters and cousins; most of them elderly women, inclined to make much of the handsome young King-errant whose melancholy never could withstand the faintest joke.

For all that Babar, at the bottom of his heart, was utterly dissatisfied with himself and his world. Never since the debacle at Samarkand had he found himself again, the light-hearted, intensely vital person, who, taking things as they came, could yet turn them to his own uses. He began to tell himself privately that, rather than pass his life as he was now doing, homeless and purposeless, it would be better to retire into some corner where he might live unknown and undistinguished; that, rather than exist in distress and abasement far better were it to flee away from the sight of man, so far as his feet could carry him. In his infancy he remembered he had always had a strong desire to see China, but had never been able to accomplish his wish because of being a King and having a duty towards his relations and connections.

Now he no longer had a throne. Now, his mother--the only tie left, for Ayesha his wife had never returned to him--was safe with her mother and her brother.

Now, therefore, was the time. His mother, however, he knew well would not support the proposition; besides he had still a few followers who, having attached themselves to him with very different hopes, would be bitterly disappointed at his project. He could not bear to hurt anyone's feelings, so he devised a plan in order to get away quietly. He had never seen his other uncle, the younger KhÂn of Outer MoghulistÂn. Why should he not go, in this slack time, and pay him a visit?

There seemed, indeed, no reason against this; and Babar was on the very point of starting when a messenger arrived hot haste, to say that the younger KhÂn himself was on his way to see his nephew and his nephew's mother!

It was a blow; Babar's plan was utterly disconcerted, but being, like all his race, full of family affection, he set off with ever so many elderly KhÂnums with beautiful high-sounding names to meet his uncle. Such a meeting as it was; so many embracings and kneelings and yet more embracings; some ceremonious, others quite without form or decorum. After which the great circle of cousins and aunts, and uncles and nephews, sat down and continued talking about past occurrences and old stories till after midnight.

His younger uncle had, according to the custom of his tribe, brought Babar a complete dress of state. A cap embroidered with gold thread, a long frock of China satin ornamented with flowered needle-work. A cuirass of fine chain-mail, Chinese fashion, with a whetstone and a purse-pocket from which were suspended a lot of little trinkets such as women wear, including a bag of perfumed earth. He looked very smart in it indeed, and when he returned to his own, tricked out in all this finery, they declared it was only by his voice they recognised him; that they had thought he was some grand young Sultan!

Life at any rate did not seem quite so empty; since the two KhÂns, having got together, began to propose a joint expedition to recover AndijÂn--for Babar, being an understood corollary so long as they remained under the influence of stern old IsÂn-daulet, who ruled her sons in matriarchal fashion.

So they set off with flaunting pennons and kettledrums, after the manner of Moghul armies, and at their first halt held a muster of the troops, also in the Moghul fashion. In groups of three, three horse-tail standards were erected, and from the centre staff of each a long strip of white cloth was fastened, on the loose end of which stood the foot of the leader of that division. All around, in a huge circle, the troops were drawn up. Then with many ceremonials and sprinklings of mares'-milk spirit, each leader estimated the total number of the force. The final verdict being received with a wild war-shout; and then, at full speed, the whole army galloped centre-wards, the foremost troopers drawing bridle within a foot or two of the standards. On this occasion Babar looked with a certain awe, yet some misgiving, at no less than thirty thousand wild horsemen of the desert.

But he had more certain aid than this. He found that he was not all forgot in the little valley at the extreme limit of the habitable world; and the country people welcomed his return with acclaim. So as soon as he could, with that curious distrust of Moghul blood, which makes the name given to the dynasty he founded in India so quaintly ironical, he parted company with his uncle's forces, and pushing on with such of his own people as had come together, sought for fine fighting.

And he got it. Still reckless, almost without definite aim, he followed swift on every opportunity for a skirmish. When he saw a body of the enemy, he advanced at full gallop without minding order or array; and in nine cases out of ten the sheer daredevil clash succeeded. The enemy could not stand the charge and fled without exchanging blows. But sometimes his ill-luck with the Moghuls pursued him. Once when he, with his staff, was waiting outside AndijÂn for the return of a messenger. It was about the third watch of the night, and some of them were nodding, others fast asleep on their horses, when all at once the saddle-drums struck up with martial noise and hubbub. The few men who were with Babar were seized with a panic and took to flight; except three, all the rest ran off to a man. In vain these four galloped after the fugitives; in vain they horsewhipped some of them.

All their exertions were ineffectual to make them stand.

There was nothing for it but to try and check the pursuers themselves as best they could. So the four turned, stood and discharged flights of arrows, until the enemy was almost within sword thrust; then, wheeling swiftly, they galloped on to take up a fresh position of offence.

In this way they covered and protected the retreat, until by good fortune they fell in with a patrol party of their own. Then, of course, came immediate charge, to discover that the pursuers were Moghuls from his uncle's force, who were out on a pillaging expedition of their own! In this manner, by a false alarm, the plan which Babar had conceived came to nothing, and he had to return after a fruitless journey.

Truly, if the young man had wished to throw away his life, he could scarcely have dared Fate more recklessly. More than once he found himself almost alone facing stupendous odds. Once, when surprised at night in negligent security without advanced guard and without videttes, he had to gallop out almost unarmed to meet a large body of the enemy and found himself in the midst of them with but three supporters. Even so Fate was against him. He drew out of his quiver by mistake a green-tipped finger guard instead of an arrow, and being unwilling to throw it away because his uncle the KhÂn had given it to him, lost as much time in returning it to its place as would have sufficed for the despatch of two arrows, and, ere he was ready, his companions had been swept back by the onslaught and he was alone. To draw up to his ear and let the foremost foe have it for all he was worth was easy, but at the same instant an arrow struck him on the right thigh unsteadying his aim, and the next moment that foremost foe was on him and smote him such a blow on the head with a sword, that, despite his steel cap he was nigh stunned. And then, through his having neglected to clean his sword after swimming a river, it had rusted a little in the scabbard and he lost time in drawing it. Still, he won through that time, and, despite continual anxiety and irritation because of the behaviour of the Moghul troops which his uncles detached to help him, and who would insist on plundering and were with difficulty restrained from putting honourable prisoners to death, he was fairly successful, until a final act of treachery threw him on his beam ends, and he was forced to retreat, fairly beaten.

He was invited to a parley by the enemy and the Moghuls urged him to accept the invitation, and by hook or by crook, to seize or murder the leaders. Babar was indignant. Such artifice and underhand dealing were, he said, totally abhorrent to his habits and disposition. If he made an agreement for peaceful interview, he would not violate it.

Nor did he. But whether from perversity or sheer stupidity, his orders were disobeyed, and he found himself committed to battle in the very heart of the opponents' defences, and without a sufficient force to secure success. Even then he challenged Fate, by waiting for personal retreat a full hour or more, unwilling, as he thought, to leave some of his friends in danger. Finally news came that having been beaten, at the other side of the city in about as much time as milk takes to boil, they, and half Babar's men, had escaped long before by another gate!

Only about twenty men were left to the young King. It was no longer season to tarry; they set off, a great band of the enemy's troops in full pursuit.

And then commenced a memorable ride for life. Man after man dropped out, maimed by the flights of following arrows.

"Help! Help!" cried a well known voice behind him and Babar instantly turned bridle to aid a dear friend. But those who rode on either side the young King would not have it; this was no time to defy Death. It was the time to keep hold on Life. So, with strong hands upon his reins, Babar had no choice but to ride on. There were but eight of them left now; a wearied, hurried band of hunted men struggling through broken glens remote from the beaten road. The enemy behind was now out of sight, but, as at sunset the fugitives passed into more level ground, a shadow darker than the shadows of evening should be, showed on the plain.

Placing his men under cover, Babar dismounted, and on foot, ascended an eminence to see what this might be. When suddenly from behind, a number of horsemen showed coming towards them. It was too dark to see their number but, doubtless, it must be a detachment in pursuit, and the only hope flight.

"There is no use, sire," said a noble, "going on thus. They will outweary and take us all. Better by far, that you and KÂli-GokultÂsh choose two extra horses from amongst us, your devoted servants; so by keeping the four horses at full speed you may escape--it is a last chance."

But Babar shook his head. To leave anyone dismounted in the midst of the enemy was beyond him; so he set his teeth and rode on.

"The Most High is heavier than I am," urged an entreating voice at his elbow, "and it is my lord they want, not this slave whose horse is fairly fresh."

Babar set his teeth again; but he felt the truth of the words and exchanged horses. JÂn-KÂli could slip aside down some ravine. They would not follow him. It was he, Zahir-ud-din Mohamed Babar, that was wanted.

Again came the plea--"My horse is fresher than the Most High's."

And yet again Babar exchanged steeds.

On and on, the horses flagging, followers dropping out, until but two remained--the King and his foster-brother KÂli-GokultÂsh.

"Sire!--you had best go on!" muttered the latter as his horse stumbled and almost fell.

"Whither?" called back the King bitterly. "Come on! be it Life or Death, let us meet it together."

And ever and ever, as they went on blindly, he paused to look back, to wait ...

And once, when he looked back there was no one near at hand. Only in the far distance, coming closer and closer, dark figures--were there two or more?

But now, alone, hopeless, the worst seemed over. Babar dug spurs into his horse, weary but willing, and was off with renewed vigour in his veins. It was himself against the world once more! He would fight it out to the end--the bitter end!

It was now dark and before him lay a hill. If he could reach it, and dismount, he might trust to his own nimbleness in climbing. But his horse was dropping, and two of the pursuers were within bowshot, ere he could fling himself from his steed on rising ground and dash up a glen to the right. He did not pause to shoot, though he had arrows in his quiver. A few of these he had stuck in his belt as he flung off his accoutrements piece-meal; they were for use at the last--the very last!

But voices followed him; eager, protesting voices. They were no enemies; neither were they friends. But they could not leave a King in such a desolate situation Let him confide in them and he might yet find safety.

It was a desperate chance; still it was a chance. And there were but two of them. One brave man could surely keep them in check--or kill them before he died. Babar pulled up, went back to his horse and faced Fate. So, all that night, they rode together, and when dawn came, one of the troopers commandeered some loaves of bread. All that day they lay watchfully in hiding, and when night came they passed on to a half-ruined house on the outskirts of a town. Here the troopers brought Babar an old fur coat; which was welcome, for the nights were bitterly cold. They also brought him a mess of boiled millet-flour pottage, which he ate and found wonderfully comfortable.

So comfortable, that having lit a fire, Babar actually fell asleep beside it, despite his imminent danger, despite his distrust of his comrades who were for ever whispering amongst themselves. But he was outwearied after three nights' riding, and two days of watchful hiding. Indeed when they roused him at dawn on the pretext that there were spies about, and that a change was imperative, he was so spent and outdone that he felt inclined to bid them do their worst, or leave him to his fate. Yet he followed them dully, to a garden on the outskirts of the town--as well die there as elsewhere.

But it was a primrose dawn, with a promise of brilliant sunshine, and the garden, partially walled, held a few flowers, a few birds.

It needed no more to re-arouse vitality, and Babar, with fresh vigour in his veins after his few hours of sleep, began to emerge from the slough of despondency in which he had passed the last three days. These would-be guides of his were doubtless traitors; could he escape them?

The day passed on to noon. Babar, in a corner of the garden, performed his religious ablutions and recited his prayers, adding to them the consolations of poetry by repeating the couplet:

That was a self-evident proposition, and as such gave his simple, clear-sighted soul much comfort. So much so, that he fell asleep under the trees, and dreamt a dream of victory and triumph.

From which he awoke to find three men standing over him, to hear whispers of how best to seize and throttle him.

To spring to his feet and face them did not take long.

"Ill-begotten, treacherous hounds!" he cried, ablaze with anger. "So canst thou dare when Babar sleeps--let us see who will lay hands on him awake!"

The villains fell back; but at that moment the tramp of horsemen was heard beyond the garden wall, and one of the trio laughed.

"Crow away, cockerel!" he cried. "Mayhap, hadst thou trusted us at first we might have let thee escape according to our oath. But now is the work of death taken out of our hands; for yonder comes a troop to seize thee and save our promise unbroken."

He turned as he spoke to welcome the newcomers, then started. For the horsemen hurrying in to the garden were not Babar's foes, but his friends!

"Kutluk! BabÂi!" cried the young King, recognising two of his most devoted adherents. They flung themselves from their horses.

"The King! Long live the King!" they shouted, as bending the knee at a respectful distance they rushed forward to fall at the feet of their dear leader.

It had been a wonderful ride for life; yet in a way a needless one, as Babar told his uncles when he rejoined them. Since, had he but known, as he afterwards discovered, that the following party was not a whole detachment, but only a band of twenty troopers, he and his seven would of course, have made a stand and engaged them with every hope of success.

Not that it would have made much difference; for both the elder KhÂn and the younger one had become weary of their expedition, and on news of the Great Usbek raider ShaibÂni's appearance in their country, had retired in hot haste to their dominions.

So Babar once more was at the end of his tether. The Moghuls he told his grandmother, to her great dudgeon, were no good as conquerors. Nature had made them pillagers, and an inch of plunder was worth more than an ell of honour.

"He is out of joint with life," said his mother, weeping.

Old IsÂn-daulet sniffed. "Try him with a pretty girl," she suggested.

The KhÂnum shook her head. "He is not that sort--he will not even marry and that is nigh shameless--since he is one and twenty, yet without a child. 'Tis hard indeed on a woman of my age to have no grandchild."

"Except Dearest-One's boy," said the old woman, her stern face softening. "Lo! perfidious barbarian though the father be, I should like to see the child. It should have the makings in it of a man--from its mother." And she was silent for awhile; perhaps she was thinking of that night in Samarkand when a girl had waited patiently for worse than death. Then she spoke:

"See you, daughter! Your boy is not all King, no more than he is all my grandson. He hath material for half-a-dozen different persons in him and he hath not yet made choice of which to take. Lo!--mayhap--I have had too big a hand in the pease-porridge. Let be a bit. Let him do as he likes for a while and if that be to leave us for the time--so be it. Hurry not God's work."

It was wise advice. None wiser. So for two whole years, the King was King-errant indeed. Even whither he went none know. Most likely he fulfilled his boyhood's desire to see China; but this much is certain. He and a few intimate friends, not half-a-dozen at most, wandered for months and months. Over the White Mountains likely, amid eternal snows, across the high lying steppes to KashgÂr, and so onwards.

Or perhaps from Tashkend he may have wandered over high plateaux and past wide lakes to the Great Tian-Shan mountains. But either way, from some high peak, he must have caught one glimpse at least of a sight never to be forgotten. The sight of the wide plain of Eastern TurkhestÂn lying like a lake of pale amber beneath an encircling rim of snowy pearls, that change to rubies in the sunset. Marvellous indeed! All around the everlasting hills contemptuous of man and his finite work, glittering icily on that ever-present haze of dust, which effaced alike, the sand of the central desert, and the faint fringe of cultivation on the skirts of the hills. Over a thousand feet of golden dust-pall covering the corpses of the six sand-buried cities of KhotÂn!

Buried when, and how? And wherefore, in God's name, did humanity found its houses on the Moving Sands?

Fine stimulation here, for the imagination of a poet born.

Babar must have sat and looked, sat and learnt from the slow invincible march of the sand waves piled by the desert winds, something of the strength of patience. Slow and sure. Under the gentle call of a summer breeze, mayhap, one sand atom shifting place; then another and another. But in the end, a high-piled wave, ready to fall over and engulf what lay beyond, when the whistle of the winter winds rang over the wastes, rousing the hidden devil in those harmless sand grains, to whirls of death.

Shifting, shifting; never still for a second. Unearthing there, burying here.

With what end?

And doubtless Babar heard the oft told tale of the MuÂzzim of KÂr, and of the minaret of the mosque which the sand can never hide for long; which even in these later days the dry biting winds of the desert lay bare, ever and anon, until the golden final of its blue dome shines bright as ever over the wide plain.

Perhaps,--being a poet born--he may have tried to put the legend into verse with better success than the following: