his hands resting idly on his knees, a strange and rather grim figure; so motionless, so utterly lifeless he seemed.  The blanket reached almost to the ground behind and hung down to his lap in front, and Shere Ali noticed that a leathern begging-bowl at his side was well filled with coins.  So he must have sat just in that attitude, with that thick covering stifling him, all through the fiery heat of that long day.  As Shere Ali looked, he saw a poor bent man in rags, with yellow caste marks on his forehead, add a copper pi to the collection in the bowl.  Shere Ali stopped the giver.

“Who is he?” he asked, pointing to the draped figure.

The old Hindu raised his hand and bowed his forehead into the palm.

“Huzoor, he is a holy man, a stranger who has lately come to Lahore, but the holiest of all the holy men who have ever sat by the Delhi Gate.  His fame is already great.”

“But why does he sit covered with the blanket?” asked Shere Ali.

“Huzoor, because of his holiness.  He is so holy that his face must not be seen.”

Shere Ali laughed.

“He told you that himself, I suppose,” he said.

“Huzoor, it is well known,” said the old man.  “He sits by the road all day until the darkness comes—­”

“Yes,” said Shere Ali, bethinking him of the recommendations in his letter, “until the darkness comes—­and then?”

“Then he goes away into the city and no one sees him until the morning”; and the old man passed on.

Shere Ali chuckled and rode by the hooded man.  His curiosity increased.  It was quite likely that the blanket hid a Mohammedan Pathan from beyond the hills.  To come down into the plains and mulct the pious Hindu by some such ingenious practice would appeal to the Pathan’s sense of humour almost as much as to his pocket.  Shere Ali drew the letter from his pocket, and in the waning light read it through again.  True, the postmark showed that the letter had been posted in Calcutta, but more than one native of Chiltistan had come south and set up as a money-lender in that city on the proceeds of a successful burglary.  He replaced the letter in his pocket, and rode on at a walk through the throng.  The darkness came quickly; oil lamps were lighted in the booths and shone though the unglazed window-spaces overhead.  A refreshing coolness fell upon the town, the short, welcome interval between the heat of the day and the suffocating heat of the night.  Shere Ali turned his horse and rode back again to the gate.  The hooded beggar still sat upon the ground, but he was alone.  The others, the blind and the maimed, had crawled away to their dens.  Except this grim motionless man, there was no one squatting upon the ground.

Shere Ali reined in beside him, and bending forward in his saddle spoke in a low voice a few words of Pushtu.  The hooded figure did not move, but from behind the blanket there issued a muffled voice.