ield rose above field, supported by stone walls. In the bosom of
the valley groups of great walnut-trees marked where the villages stood.

Captain Phillips rode through the villages. Everywhere he was met with
smiling faces and courteous salutes; but he drew no comfort from them.
The Chilti would smile pleasantly while he was fitting his knife in under
your fifth rib. Only once did Phillips receive a hint that something was
amiss, but the hint was so elusive that it did no more than quicken his
uneasiness.

He was riding over grass, and came silently upon a man whose back was
turned to him.

"So, Dadu," he said quietly, "you must not open closed boxes any more in
your house."

The man jumped round. He was not merely surprised, he was startled.

"Your Excellency rides up the valley?" he cried, and almost he
barred the way.

"Why not, Dadu?"

Dadu's face became impassive.

"It is as your Excellency wills. It is a good day for a ride," said Dadu;
and Captain Phillips rode on.

It might of course have been that the man had been startled merely by the
unexpected voice behind him; and the question which had leaped from his
mouth might have meant nothing at all. Captain Phillips turned round in
his saddle. Dadu was still standing where he had left him, and was
following the rider with his eyes.

"I wonder if there is anything up the valley which I ought to know
about?" Captain Phillips said to himself, and he rode forward now with a
watchful eye. The hills began to close in; the bosom of the valley to
narrow. Nine miles from Kohara it became a defile through which the river
roared between low precipitous cliffs. Above the cliffs on each side a
level of stony ground, which here and there had been cleared and
cultivated, stretched to the mountain walls. At one point a great fan of
debris spread out from a side valley. Across this fan the track mounted,
and then once more the valley widened out. On the river's edge a roofless
ruin of a building, with a garden run wild at one end of it, stood apart.
A few hundred yards beyond there was a village buried among bushes, and
then a deep nullah cut clean across the valley. It was a lonely and a
desolate spot. Yet Captain Phillips never rode across the fan of shale
and came within sight of it but his imagination began to people it with
living figures and a surge of wild events. He reined in his horse as he
came to the brow of the hill, and sat for a moment looking downwards.