Long before we caught sight of the water again, through a ragged gap between high limestone rocks, I could smell a village.  The guide approached it cautiously, stopping every minute or so to listen.  When we came on it at last it was down below us in abysmal darkness, one light shining through a window two feet square in proof we were not hesitating on the verge of the infinite pit.

The donkeys knew the way.  They trod daintily, like little ladies, along a circling track that goats made and men had certainly done nothing to improve.  We made an almost complete ellipse around and down, and rode at last over dry dung at the bottom, into which the donkeys’ feet sank as into a three-pile carpet.  You could see the stars overhead, but nothing, where we were, except that window and a shaft of yellow light with hundreds of moths dazzled in it.

We must have made some noise in spite of the donkeys’ vetvet foot-fall.  As we crossed the shaft of light a door opened within six feet of the window.  A man in Arab deshabille with a red tarboosh awry, thrust out his head and drew it in again quickly.

“Is that the American?” he asked.  He held the door so that he could slam it in our faces if required.

The guide made no answer.  I gave my name.  The man opened the door wider.

“Lailtak sa’idi, effendi!  Hishkur Allah!  Come in, mister!” The guide led the donkeys away to some invisible place.  I crossed the threshold, my host holding his tin lantern carefully to show the two steps leading down to a flag-stone floor.  He bolted the door the moment I was inside.  He seemed in a great state of excitement, and afraid to make any noise.  Even when he shot the bolt he did it silently.

It was a square room, moderately clean, furnished only with a table and two chairs.  There were other rooms leading off it, but the stone partitions did not reach as high as the thatch and I could hear rustling, and some one snoring.  I sat on one of the chairs at his invitation, and rather hoped for supper, having had none.  But supper was not in his mind; it seemed he had too much else to worry him.  He looked like a man who worried easily, and likely enough with good reason, for his long nose and narrow eyes did not suggest honesty.

“There was to be an escort to meet me here,” I said.

“Yes, yes.  Thank God, mister, you have come at last.  If you had only come at sunset!  Ali has gone to bring them now.”

“Who is Ali?”

“He with one eye.  He who brought you.  Your escort came at sunset.  Because I am Christian they would not listen to me or wait for you in my house.  There are twenty of them, led by Anazeh, who is a bad rascal.  They have gone to raid the villages.  There has been trouble.  I have heard two shots fired.  Now they will come back to my house, and if the Sikh patrol is after them they will be caught here, and I shall be accused of helping them.  May the fires of their lying Prophet’s Eblis burn Anazeh and his men forever and ever, Amen!  May God curse their religion!”