ish scouts of our bona fides. We thought
of Gooja Singh, and had no wish that Tugendheim should meet a like
fate. So, perhaps because we all begged for him, or perhaps because
he so intended in the first place, Ranjoor Singh relented.

"The Persians hereabouts," he said, "all tell me that a great
Russian army will come down presently from the north. Have I heard
correctly that you meditated escape into Russia?"

Tugendheim answered, "How should I reach Russia?"

"That is thy affair!" said Ranjoor Singh. "But here is more gold,"
and he counted out to him ten more golden German coins. "You must
ride back with these Kurds, but I have no authority over them. They
are not my men. They seem to like gold more than most things."

So Tugendheim ceased begging for himself and rode away rather
despondently in the midst of the Kurds; and we followed about a day
and a half behind the German party with their strange box-full of
machinery. There were many of us who could talk Persian, and as we
stopped in the villages to beg or buy curdled milk, and as we
rounded up the cattle-herdsmen and the women by the wells, we heard
many strange and wonderful stories about what the engine in that box
could do. I observed that Ranjoor Singh looked merry-eyed when the
wildest stories reached him; but we all began to reflect on the
disastrous consequences of letting such crafty people reach
Afghanistan. For, as doubtless the sahib knows, the amir of
Afghanistan has a very great army; and if he were to decide that the
German side is after all the winning one he might make very much
trouble for the government of India.

And now there was no longer any doubt that the machine slung in the
box between two mules was a wireless telegraph, and that most of the
other mules were loaded with accessories. The tales we heard could
not be made to tally with any other explanation. And what, said we,
was to prevent the Germans in Stamboul from signaling whatever lies
they could invent to this party in Afghanistan, supposing they
should ever reach the country? Yet when we argued thus with Ranjoor
Singh, he laughed.

And then, after about a week of marching, came Tugendheim back to
us, ragged and thirsty and nearly dead, on a horse more dead than
he. He had bought himself free from the Kurds with the gold Ranjoor
Singh gave him; but because he had no more gold the Persians had
refused to feed him. "How should he find his way alone to meet the
Russians," he s