A mullah sat cross-legged, his straggling beard in his lap, repeating some crazy charm to himself and looking every now and again with anxious eyes to the guest who sat on the chief's right hand.
The guest was a long, thin man, clad in the Cossacks' fur lined military cloak, under which his untanned riding-boots showed red in the moonlight.

He was still busy eating goat's flesh, cheese and fruits, and drinking deeply from the sweet Hunza wine, like a man who had come far and fast.

He ate with the utmost disregard of his company.

He might have been a hunter supping alone in the solitary hills for all the notice he took of the fifty odd men around him.
By and by be finished, pulled forth a little silver toothpick from an inner pocket, and reached a hand for the long cherry-wood pipe which had been placed beside him.

He lit it, and blew a few clouds into the calm air.
"Now, Fazir Khan," he said, "I am a new man, and we shall talk.