CHAPTER XV.
Ho! I am king! All lesser fry Must cringe, and crawl, and cry to me, And none have any rights but I,-- Except the right to lie to me.
JAIMIHR was not the only man who would have dearly liked to know of the whereabouts of Mahommed Gunga.

It had been reported to Maharajah Howrah, by his spies, that the redoubtable ex-Risaldar of horse had visited his relatives in Howrah City, and, though he had not been able to ascertain a word of what had passed, he was none the less anxious.
He knew, of course--for every soul in Howrah knew--that Jaimihr was plotting for the throne.

He knew, too, that the priests of Siva, who with himself were joint keepers of the wickedly won, tax-swollen treasure, had sounded Jaimihr; they had tentatively hinted that they might espouse his cause, provided that an equitable division of the treasure were arranged beforehand.

The question uppermost in Maharajah Howrah's mind was whether the Rangars--the Moslem descendants of once Hindoo Rajputs, who formed such a small but valuable proportion of the local population--could or could not be induced to throw in their lot with him.
No man on the whole tax-ridden countryside believed or considered it as a distant possibility that the Rangars would strike for any hand except their own; they were known, on the other hand, to be more or less cohesive, and it was considered certain that, whichever way they swung, when the priest-pulled string let loose the flood of revolution, they would swing all together.

The question, then, was how to win the favor of the Rangars.