by Allah from those who do evil ignorantly, and then repent speedily; unto them Allah will turn with forgiveness; for He is knowing and wise and merciful!”
For it appeared that, suddenly, without any known reason, both Abderrahman Yahiah Khan and his friend and ally, “The Basin,” had—to put it vulgarly—“got religion.”
At first, when early that morning the governor of the western marches mentioned that he and Musa Al-Mutasim were going toward the Afghan border on a pious pilgrimage to the shrine of a certain canonized doctor of Koranic theology, called Syyed Ahmet el-Tachfin the Clarified-Butter Seller, and to go there through many intricate religious rites and ceremonies, Mr. Preserved Higgins and Tollemache Wade treated it in the light of a rather crude jest. For it was a notorious fact that, of all the bad Moslems in Central Asia, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan was the worst, with Musa Al-Mutasim running him a close second. From gambling to drinking fermented spirits, from refusing alms to the poor to robbing the orphans of their portion, from practicing usury to neglecting their prayers, there were few Koranic laws which they did not break, almost daily, and with a sort of sneering bravado.
“Right-oh!” said Mr. Higgins, the Babu interpreting. “That's wot you need—religion—bloomin' fine joke!”
But the other turned on him a stony and reproachful eye.
“Saheb,” he said, “it is not fitting to make a mock of a man's honest repentance. I have been a sinner of sins. So has Musa Al-Mutasim. And now we go
