Two nights ago, by the flat stone
where the fairies dance, she heard them--the voices of an innumerable
multitude in the air talking the Chilti tongue--talking of trouble to
come in the near days."

He spoke with burning eyes fixed upon the Resident and with his fingers
playing nervously in and out among the hairs of his beard. Whether the
Khan really believed the story of the fairies--there is nothing more
usual than a belief in fairies in the countries bordered by the
snow-peaks of the Hindu Kush--or whether he used the story as a blind to
conceal the real source of his fear, the Resident could not decide. But
what he did know was this: The Khan of Chiltistan was desperately afraid.
A whole programme of reform was sketched out for the Captain's hearing.

"I have been a good friend to the English, Captain Sahib. I have kept my
Mullahs and my people quiet all these years. There are things which might
be better, as your Excellency has courteously pointed out to me, and the
words have never been forgotten. The taxes no doubt are very burdensome,
and it may be the caravans from Bokhara and Central Asia should pay less
to the treasury as they pass through Chiltistan, and perhaps I do
unjustly in buying what I want from them at my own price." Thus he
delicately described the system of barefaced robbery which he practised
on the traders who passed southwards to India through Chiltistan. "But
these things can be altered. Moreover," and here he spoke with an air of
distinguished virtue, "I propose to sell no more of my people into
slavery--No, and to give none of them, not even the youngest, as presents
to my friends. It is quite true of course that the wood which I sell to
the merchants of Peshawur is cut and brought down by forced labour, but
next year I am thinking of paying. I have been a good friend to the
English all my life, Colonel Sahib."

Captain Phillips had heard promises of the kind before and accounted them
at their true value. But he had never heard them delivered with so
earnest a protestation. And he rode away from the Palace with the
disturbing conviction that there was something new in the wind of which
he did not know.

He rode up the valley, pondering what that something new might be.
Hillside and plain were ablaze with autumn colours. The fruit in the
orchards--peaches, apples, and grapes--was ripe, and on the river bank
the gold of the willows glowed among thickets of red rose. High up on the
hills, f