In December of the first year of the war, a letter came to the Indian
post-office in London with this address, written in the topknotted
Marathi character, and hence perfectly incomprehensible to every one
but the Jat orderly who read it:
“In the land of the European War
The country of the King of France
For my beloved son, the Sepoy Khundadad Khan
And the hand of any who bears this to him shall be that of a
gentleman.”
It was an extraordinary epistle to look at, very thick, and its
envelope was an old official one that had been carefully ungummed
and refolded wrong side out. And it had come from a tiny village on
the banks of the Jhelum River, far away in India. But what was more
extraordinary still, its owner received it that very day. For Khundadad
Khan had become a very great man indeed, and his name was fully as
well known in London then, as ever it had been in his native village.
Lying in the Kensington hospital, he stroked his long black curly
beard, the exact color of his hair, and murmured, as he fingered the
bulky contents of the letter (a parchment verse from the _Koran_ tied
up in silk with a dried serpent’s fang), “Oh, yes, it is a very good
tawíz—charm—as such things go, and will no doubt keep off many demons.
But the King-Emperor has given me a better one, is it not so, my
friend?”
[Illustration:
© _American Press Association._