The Mogul's nostrils began again to swell, and he bid the strangers be off.

The groom and butler interceded, for their master was a grave, sedate man, and they wanted companions.

All would not do, and the strangers fell in the rear.

The next day, when they had got to the middle of an extensive and uninhabited plain, the Mogul in advance, and his two servants a few hundred yards behind, he came up to a party of six poor Musalmans, sitting weeping by the side of a dead companion.

They were soldiers from Lahore,[11] on their way to Lucknow, worn down by fatigue in their anxiety to see their wives and children once more, after a long and painful service.