rences between his features and those of the
Pathans among whom he dwelt. His nose was arched, but it was thinner
than was usual among his countrymen. His lips were not so thick as
theirs, nor was his mouth so large, and his eyes, instead of coal-black,
were of a curious steely-grey. And any one who saw him bathing with the
lads of his village (itself a strange pastime, for the hill-men have no
great partiality for water) would have been struck by the paleness of
his skin where it was protected from the sun and the weather. The
observer's conclusion would probably have been that Ahmed was a Pathan
of a particularly refined type, and in all likelihood an offshoot of
some noble family which time's vicissitudes had reduced.

Ahmed stood for a few moments looking down at Shagpur, then turned to
pursue his way. He had a fowling-piece slung at his back; his intention
was to ascend the hills for perhaps another thousand feet, to a spot
where he would probably come upon a small herd of black-buck. But he had
not mounted far from the place at which he had paused when he halted
again, and, putting his left hand above his eyes to shield them from the
sun's rays, gazed steadily in a direction away from the village. Below
him the plain stretched for many miles, bare and desolate, though when
the rains came by and by it would be clothed with verdure. Scarcely a
tree broke its level, and so parched was it now that no beast could have
found sustenance there. But far away Ahmed's keen eye had descried what
appeared to be a speck upon the horizon, and he watched it intently.

There was nothing unusual in the sight itself. Many a time he had seen
just such a speck in the sky, watched it grow in breadth and height,
until it stretched across the plain like an immense wall, thirty miles
long, a thousand feet high. He had seen it approach like a monstrous
phantom, driving before it, as it were, circling flights of kites and
vultures, enveloping the bases of the hills, shutting out the sun with
yellow scudding clouds. But such a dust-storm ordinarily swept over the
plain southwards: Ahmed had never seen one approach from the west; and
after a long and steady gaze at the speck, which grew slowly in size, he
suddenly dropped his hand, uttered an exclamation in the Pashtu tongue,
and turning his back began to retrace his course, at a speed vastly
greater than that at which he had formerly been moving, towards his
distant village.

The moving sp