Minghal Khan got out of the palace before Rahmut Khan, and hastened immediately to his house. He then dispatched his khitmutgar to bid the attendance of one of the jamadars of his regiment.
"Salaam, Azim Ali," he said in response to the officer's greeting. "I have but now returned from the palace. The old king grows more feeble, and his authority less and less. There was much talk among us of the arrears of pay; but it is indeed true that the treasury is all but empty, and it will never be full while Wallidad Khan is collector of the revenue, and such pitiful nassars are brought to the king as were brought to-day. Imagine, Azim Ali, a bent old dodderer who claimed kinship with the Lord of the World, and offered him two rupees!"
"It is indeed pitiful," said the jamadar. "What is to be said to the sowars? They will assuredly plunder the shops if they get no pay, and the general has said that all plunderers shall be hanged."
"What, indeed? Is it not hard that our men, who have been enduring the heat and burden, throwing away their lives in fighting the English, should be worse off than such brigands as the men whom this Asadullah has brought into the city? The general forbids plunder: well, he is a friend of mine, and must be obeyed. But these new-comers, have they not plundered? What have they done but load themselves with the loot of villages, and snapped up ill-defended convoys--enterprises of little difficulty and less danger? There is great talk of this old freebooter as a man of high courage: hai! it is false. Do I not know of him? They call him lion; a more fitting name would be pariah dog. He is not a man to risk his skin. And yet, forsooth, he comes into Delhi at the head of these three hundred, and the king slobbers over him, and without doubt he will squeeze from the treasury what rupees he can, and then, when the word comes to fight, he will shelter himself behind us who know what fighting is, and expect his full share of plunder when the English are beaten. Hai! it is a shame and a scandal."
"True, most noble subahdar; it is enough to make our men rise up and claim that all who enter thus with full hands should share what they have among us."
"And what they could not keep but for us; for are there not princes in the city who, were these men left undefended, would swoop down like hawks upon them and strip them of all they have? Without us, trained soldiers, would not the English assuredly catch them and hang them up? Is this thing to be endured? Here are we, lodged within a shout's distance of them, and we starve while they live on the fat of the land."