About noon
Presently they went away in haste ; they went over the hills and were not ; and a black slave came out and washed the door-sills with bright water . Sikandar Khan saw through the glasses that the stain was blood , and he laughed , saying , `` Wounded men lie there . We shall yet get vengeance . '' About noon we saw a thin , high smoke to the southward , such a smoke as a burning house will make in sunshine , and Sikandar Khan , who knows how to take a bearing across a hill , said , `` At last we have burned the house of the pumpkin-seller whence they signalled . '' And I said : `` What need now that they have slain my child ? Let me mourn . '' It was a high smoke , and the old man , as I saw , came out into the verandah to behold it , and shook his clenched hands at it .