"Groom and cook too? you're a clever fellow!" cried Denis, gaily. "I'm glad that I've caught you just at dinner-time, for I'm desperately hungry. Just returned from a long expedition, riding day and night from dawn to sunset. I'll just turn into the house and have a smoke, whilst you look after the bay."
Even had Walter had no reason to feel grateful towards Denis, he was much too hospitable to grudge the stranger a share of the dinner which was to have lasted himself for two meals, though he had had nothing but chapatties on the previous day, and it was doubtful when he would again be able to procure anything more substantial.
When Walter re-entered the dwelling, carrying with him the stewed pheasant and chapatties, he found his guest seated at his ease on a chair, with his feet on the table, smoking. Denis threw away his cigar, put down his feet, and applied himself with vigour to the occupation of eating his dinner, demolishing more than two-thirds of the pheasant, whilst talking all the time.
"A most unlucky chance for me, my fellow's falling ill!" he exclaimed. "He was a regular brick; could jabber several languages, was clever at everything—of course cheating his master included. I daresay that he shammed sickness, because he had no fancy to go where I am going. How to supply his place I know not. By-the-by, do you happen to know anything of Pushtoo?"*
* The language of the Afghans.
"I know it pretty well," replied Walter, who was a very good linguist; "Afghans frequently pass this way; we have had one here for weeks who has just recovered from a troublesome illness, and is going back to his home. He is a Kandahar man."
"A Kandahar man!" exclaimed Denis eagerly. "That's just what I wanted. Do you think that he would act as my guide into Afghanistan?"
"You do not mean that you think of crossing the border?" said Walter in surprise.
"Cross it? yes, and go a great way beyond it—as far as Kandahar, possibly to Kabul; I have a great object before me," said Denis, mysteriously lowering his voice.
"You are hardly aware of the danger——"