glen up which ran the
road to Yarkand, the other descending from the northern hills in a wild
gully. At the foot stood a little hut with an apology for stabling,
where an old and dirty gentleman of the Hunza race pursued his calling
till such time as he should attract the notice of his friends up in the
hills and go to paradise with a slit throat.

Lewis roused the man with a violent knocking at the door. The old
ruffian appeared with a sputtering lamp which might have belonged to a
cave man, and a head of matted grey hair which suggested the same
origin. He was old and suspicious, but at Lewis's bidding he hobbled
forth and pointed out the stabling.

"The pony is to stay here till it is called for. Do you hear? And if
Holm Sahib returns and finds that it is not fed he will pay you nothing.
So good night, father. Sound sleep and a good conscience."

He turned to the twisting hill road which ran up from the light into the
gloom of the cleft with all the vigour of an old mountaineer who has
been long forced to dwell among lowlands. Once a man acquires the art
of hill walking he will always find flat country something of a burden,
and the mere ascent of a slope will have a tonic's power. The path was
good, but perilous at the best, and the proximity of yawning precipices
gave a zest to the travel. The road would fringe a pit of shade, black
but for the gleam of mica and the scattered foam of the stream. It was
no longer a silent world. Hawks screamed at times from the cliffs, and
a multitude of bats and owls flickered in the depths. A continuous
falling of waters, an infinite sighing of night winds, the swaying and
tossing which is always heard in the midmost mountain solitudes, the
crumbling of hill gravel and the bleat of a goat on some hill-side, all
made a cheerful accompaniment to the scraping of his boots on the rocky
road.

He remembered the way as if he had travelled it yesterday. Soon the
gorge would narrow and he would be almost at the water's edge. Then the
path turned to the right and wound into the heart of a side nullah,
which at length brought it out on a little plateau of rocks. There the
road climbed a long ridge till at last it reached the great plateau,
where Forza, set on a small hilltop, watched thirty miles of primeval
desert. The air was growing chilly, for the road climbed steeply and
already it was many thousand feet above the sea. The curious salt smell
which comes from snow and rock was begin