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I suppose Allu was telling him where to get cattle."

Allu, a notorious cattle-thief, is now too old and crippled to turn out himself, but is the king of the riverain.

"Then," said Jamal, "his nephew Ahmeda will have been with Mitha."

"Why," said the Duffadar, "that clears things up. Ahmeda passed through Uttera the other day. He said he was going on a pilgrimage to the great Sultan Bahu shrine. He must have been scouting. Any way," making a cast round, "the line will always incline southwards now. Mitha will be making for the islands, and that mountainy man with the Kohat sandals will have to cross the second branch and get up to the rugged hills behind."

The ground was now a good loam and the tracks showed very clear. We left Bashka with Piru (who lived at a well on the edge of a creek close by and was one of the Mian's own tenants) to cover over a selection of the impressions with the flat earthen pans used for baking.

Bashka, even from the back of the pony, had all the while been muttering away. "See the separation between the first two toes; notice how much weight this man throws on the left heel; the third man has a big stride," and similar comments.

Once off, he was running circles round each similar impression as it occurred with his long stick and marking every

dissimilarity.

We left him

making certain measurements just to make sure and to keep his attention fixed on his work, a detail that was no more necessary for him than for our readers to measure the King's head in order to remember what a shilling looks like.

Four miles from the high bank we reached a great belt of sandhills which mark a former bed of the river. It was slow work for foot-men to cross these three-quarters of a mile. I knew the locality well. Was it not there that Dempster (a former assistant) and I had dragged our weary limbs up and down and round the sandhills after four lesser bustard till we shamelessly gave up and went home? There was little chance of getting them, it is true, and we had tried several dodges. In the wind they would not sit, but walked incessantly, their long necks and the absence of cover spoiling all chance of a successful stalk. Also it was true that we had on this occasion too had tea before dawn, and had already worked hard for a fair bag of duck, snipe, grey partridge, and a hare, and that it was then eleven. Still, I am glad to remember that it was the younger man who sat down first.

We pushed the ponies through the sand, hot - foot, because the tracks showed very fresh and we could not be far behind. As we topped the last hillock we were delighted to see in the far distance the little group that we were after. Now we could

hunt by sight instead of by trail. It was a stern chase, and the river was now not far distant. The younger men, cavalrymen all, with Vernon, dashed off in hot pursuit. Now I regretted that I had stuck to the camel. Shuffle, shuffle, had been good enough while the riders alternated between trot and walk, but now the ponies had the best of it. Still, our camels were good ones. Thud, thud, banged Jamal's heels on the sides of his beast. "God's slaughter strike you!" shouted old Buddhu, in his excitement, to his. "I am dead from beating you.'

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splendid game much resembling Rugby football in all save the presence of the ball. It is the essence of Doda that one man, employing most of the devices known to the Rugby footballer for defeating an opponent, must evade two pursuers who give him only a limited start. And what Mitha did not know about the game was not worth knowing.

As the Jemadar and a sowar left their horses on the edge of the river flats and made for Mitha, in a flash I recognised in him the champion I had seen at the great Fair at Behal, where Doda players and wrestlers from half a dozen districts came to compete. I remembered the chuckle with which Malik Ranjha, an old squireen with a voice like a bull and the frame of a giant, himself a famous Doda player in his youth, had pointed the remark that I "might some day be seeing Mitha again in a different capacity.'

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Mitha stuck to a bundle he was carrying, and thus his pursuers had a chance to close with him. Suddenly the sowar tried to tackle him, but Mitha handed him off with a vigour that sent him on his back, and the Jemadar was helpless alone. Mitha then plunged into the stream and made off. We were men of the desert, and could not tackle the islanders in their native element.

"Wah, wah. That blackguard Ahmeda has had his air-skin with him all the time," said Jamal.

He was right. Ahmeda had

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had a fairly clear field, and his only pursuer had come a bad toss in one of the dry quicksands which are one of the most unpleasant features of our riverain.

"Well, that beats all," said Vernon. "What a resourceful ruffian!"

There Ahmeda was, calmly blowing up a goatskin. He divested himself of his clothes, put them and his bundle of loot on his head, and placing the skin between between his legs drifted down the river.

"Never mind, Ressaldar Sahib," said Mian Jamal, "they can't hope to evade the law for long. Our people are Our people are too home-loving to be absent any time. Besides, Ahmeda is bound to complete his alibi by going to the Sultan Bahu shrine, where the police will soon account for him."

The

We now had leisure to examine our prisoners. weaver was a local man suborned for the occasion by Mitha. The mountainy man was a stranger. I fear they had received no very gentle handling during the capture. But nothing was to be found on them, and they were sullenly irresponsive to ques

tions. The Duffadar and the reservist tied them securely up with goat-hair ropes, and led a captive apiece along at their stirrups.

We were getting very hungry by now, and were full twelve miles from Hazratabad. "What about your rules for the commissariat now?" said Vernon.

"Well, it only shows that it

never pays to break them," I replied.

However, Jamal was a power in this part of the world, and his parishioners insisted on our all forgathering at the nearest hamlet. Our desert people are the pink of hospitable courtesy. The unleavened cakes which they pressed upon us are not so indigestible when one is very hungry. Even if the hardboiled eggs we had to eat bore upon their whites the thumbimpressions of the zealous hosts who could not be dissuaded from peeling them for us, we could still eat the yolks, and there was nobody to mark or mock our attempts to eat liquid chicken-curry with our fingers. Vernon felt that the goodwill of the hamlet could no further go, when an aged watchman insisted on massaging his legs, "because he must be tired."

"If the old man were not so pleasant," said Vernon to me, "I should ask him what business a village policeman has to have a figure like a Falstaff."

How the natives' tongues wagged!

"Will Vernon Sahib try our thieves?" asked the Ressaldar of me.

"No," I said, "he has had too much personal connection with them already. I shall have to send the case to the Rai Sahib" (a very respectable but rather easy-going old Native magistrate).

"That's a pity," sighed the Ressaldar. "Of course it's a clear case, but the Rai Sahib is too gentle, and may let them

down easy, whereas Vernon Sahib would have done Justice."

"No wonder the Duffadar Sahib was loath to lose his jewels," laughed a reservist. "I was with him in China in the Expedition, when he got them as loot. It was not always safe to enter the houses, but the Duffadar Sahib is a man of resource. He always used to get a plump Chinaman and, opening the door, push him in first, in case there was any shooting likely to be done by the occupants of the house."

"Oh, shameless one," replied the indignant Duffadar; "I

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man, we remounted our camels and started for home.

"Well, Buddhu," said Vernon, "you were right. The shrike brought us good luck."

Shortly after our start came the time for the Ressaldar and his party to break off to their own homes.

"I swear, Sahib," said the old man to me, "by my white beard" (it was dyed red, as a matter of fact, and I saw Vernon's mouth twitch), "you have all done us a service I shall not forget. But for you and Vernon Sahib and the Mian, whom may God preserve, we might not have caught those scoundrels. I pray for your health and prosperity, and, say the wise, in the prayers of the old there is special merit.''

THE MOUNT OF THE SERVANTS OF GOD.

THERE lies upon the northern limits of Mesopotamia a lofty plateau known as the Tur Abdin. The Tigris embraces it to north and east; on the south side its heights fall abruptly into the Mesopotamian deserts, which, interrupted only by the long hog's back of the Jebel Sinjar, extend to the Persian Gulf. The Mount of the Servants of God-such is the meaning of its beautiful name-was known to the ancients as Masius Mons and Izala Mons, Mount Izala occupying the eastern end of the plateau. This country lay upon the confines of the Roman and the Persian empires, and in the confused accounts of the campaigns of Constantius, Justinian, and Heraclius the frontier fortresses of Izala and Masius play a conspicuous part. While war raged round Amida, Marde, Dara, and Nisibis, the secluded valleys of the Tur Abdin were falling peacefully into the hands of the Servants of God. The Mount was a stronghold of the Christian faith; monastery after monastery rose among the oak-woods, the rolling uplands were cleared and planted with vineyards, and the ancient communities of the Eastern Church multiplied and grew rich in their almost inaccessible retreat.

So seldom is this region visited by travellers that it was almost by chance that I turned aside from the valley of the Tigris, along which I was

riding from Mosul to Diarbekr, and having conveyed my caravan (not without difficulty) across the river in an ancient ferry boat, set out into the hills in quest of early Christian churches. We rode over wide uplands, almost entirely uncultivated, and covered in places with small oak - trees. There were no streams or wells, and the rare villages, inhabited partly by Jacobite Christians and partly by Moslem Kurds, derived their water from muddy pools which had been filled by the snows of winter and the rains of spring. Neither were there any ruins which bore the mark of a high antiquity, though at almost every village shapeless heaps of stones pointed to the former existence of a larger settlement.

Upon the second day we reached Ba Sebrina, which is inhabited wholly by Christians. It has been an important place, and though it has now fallen to the estate of a small hamlet, it contains innumerable monasteries. Several of these are beyond the limits of the town. They lie, each in its own enclosing wall, like little forts upon the hills, and each is garrisoned by a single monk; but the vaulted chapel and the rooms set round a tiny court are rudely built of undressed stones, almost totally dark, and without any pretension to architectural interest. The largest church in the place was, however, built upon a

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