the window there fell a
shadow, and a young officer of the Khyber Rifles passed by to the door.
Captain Singleton was announced, and a boy--or so he looked--dark-haired
and sunburnt, entered the office. For eighteen months he had been
stationed in the fort at Landi Kotal, whence the road dips down between
the bare brown cliffs towards the plains and mountains of Afghanistan.
With two other English officers he had taken his share in the difficult
task of ruling that regiment of wild tribesmen which, twice a week,
perched in threes on some rocky promontory, or looking down from a
machicolated tower, keeps open the Khyber Pass from dawn to dusk and
protects the caravans. The eighteen months had written their history upon
his face; he stood before Ralston, for all his youthful looks, a quiet,
self-reliant man.

"I have come down on leave, sir," he said. "On the way I fetched Rahat
Mian out of his house and brought him in to Peshawur."

Ralston looked up with interest.

"Any trouble?" he asked.

"I took care there should be none."

Ralston nodded.

"He had better be safely lodged. Where is he?"

"I have him outside."

Ralston rang for lights, and then said to Singleton: "Then, I'll
see him now."

And in a few minutes an elderly white-bearded man, dressed from head to
foot in his best white robes, was shown into the room.

"This is his Excellency," said Captain Singleton, and Rahat Mian bowed
with dignity and stood waiting. But while he stood his eyes roamed
inquisitively about the room.

"All this is strange to you, Rahat Mian," said Ralston. "How long is it
since you left your house in the Khyber Pass?"

"Five years, your Highness," said Rahat Mian, quietly, as though there
were nothing very strange in so long a confinement within his doors.

"Have you never crossed your threshold for five years?" asked Ralston.

"No, your Highness. I should not have stepped back over it again, had I
been so foolish. Before, yes. There was a deep trench dug between my
house and the road, and I used to crawl along the trench when no-one was
about. But after a little my enemies saw me walking in the road, and
watched the trench."

Rahat Mian lived in one of the square mud windowless houses, each with a
tower at a corner which dot the green wheat fields in the Khyber Pass
wherever the hills fall back and leave a level space. His house was
fifty yards from the road, and the trench stretched to it from his very
door. But not