men dropped down among the
stones. Whatever might happen now, they had the upper ground of any
attack.

The thunder ceased, and with it the rain, and the soft thick darkness
of a winter night before the dawn covered them all. Except for the
sound of falling water among the ravines below, everything was still.
They heard the shutter of the watch-tower below them thrown back with
a clang, and the voice of the watcher calling: 'Oh, Hafiz Ullah!'

The echoes took up the call, 'La-la-la!' And an answer came from the
watch-tower hidden round the curve of the hill, 'What is it, Shahbaz
Khan?'

Shahbaz Khan replied in the high-pitched voice of the mountaineer:
'Hast thou seen?'

The answer came back: 'Yes. God deliver us from all evil spirits!'

There was a pause, and then: 'Hafiz Ullah, I am alone! Come to me!'

'Shahbaz Khan, I am alone also; but I dare not leave my post!'

'That is a lie; thou art afraid.'

A longer pause followed, and then: 'I am afraid. Be silent! They are
below us still. Pray to God and sleep.'

The troopers listened and wondered, for they could not understand
what save earth and stone could lie below the watch-towers.

Shahbaz Khan began to call again: 'They are below us. I can see them.
For the pity of God come over to me, Hafiz Ullah! My father slew ten
of them. Come over!'

Hafiz Ullah answered in a very loud voice, 'Mine was guiltless. Hear,
ye Men of the Night, neither my father nor my blood had any part in
that sin. Bear thou thy own punishment, Shahbaz Khan.'

'Oh, some one ought to stop those two chaps crowing away like cocks
there,' said Lieutenant Halley, shivering under his rock.

He had hardly turned round to expose a new side of him to the rain
before a bearded, long-locked, evil-smelling Afghan rushed up the
hill, and tumbled into his arms. Halley sat upon him, and thrust as
much of a sword-hilt as could be spared down the man's gullet. 'If
you cry out, I kill you,' he said cheerfully.

The man was beyond any expression of terror. He lay and quaked,
grunting. When Halley took the sword-hilt from between his teeth, he
was still inarticulate, but clung to Halley's arm, feeling it from
elbow to wrist.

'The Rissala! The dead Rissala!' he gasped. 'It is down there!'

'No; the Rissala, the very much alive Rissala. It is up here,' said
Halley, unshipping his watering-bridle, and fastening the man's
hands. 'Why were you in the towers so foolish as to let us pass?'

'The vall