But after a little my enemies saw me walking in the road, and watched the trench." Rahat Mian lived in one of the square mud windowless houses, each with a tower at a corner which dot the green wheat fields in the Khyber Pass wherever the hills fall back and leave a level space.

His house was fifty yards from the road, and the trench stretched to it from his very door.

But not two hundred yards away there were other houses, and one of these held Rahat Mian's enemies.

The feud went back many years to the date when Rahat Mian, without asking anyone's leave or paying a single farthing of money, secretly married the widowed mother of Futteh Ali Shah.

Now Futteh Ali Shah was a boy of fourteen who had the right to dispose of his mother in second marriage as he saw fit, and for the best price he could obtain.