'Eat, sahib,' he would say; 'remember the proverb—touch the stomach and you injure the vitals, but cherish it and you gain heart.'
'But my heart sinks when I think of the friends I have lost through vile treachery.'
'It was the will of God your people should perish in the Bala Hissar,' replied Mahmoud, quietly, as he filled his mouth with a handful of boiled rice and green chillies. 'What says the Koran? "When God willeth evil on a people there shall be none to avert it, neither shall they have any protector beside Him. It is He who causeth the lightning to appear unto you, to strike fear, to raise hope, and who formeth the pregnant clouds." Praise God for His bounty; eat and have no heavy thoughts. The Prophet has written every man's fatal hour upon his forehead. It is done at his birth. Yours had not come, on that day in the Bala Hissar.'
Then Colville would think how strange and striking were his surroundings, and from the bearded face of the sirdir who squatted on a carpet opposite to him his eyes would wander round the Dewan-i-Kas where they were eating the evening meal.
A piece of raw cotton floating in oil that was held in an old ladle wedged into the bare stone wall cast its fitful and lurid glare on the dark faces, the gleaming eyes, the quaint costumes, and oriental weapons of the sirdir's men, who marvelled that he fed and housed an unbeliever, instead of cutting his throat and tossing his carcase to the jackals of the Beymaroo hills; an unbeliever, who shaved his chin and not his head; but Allah! how strange were the customs for the Feringhee-logue!
'And fortunate it was for you,' Mahmoud resumed after a time, when his chibouque was brought him, 'that your hour had not come; but come it will, and how will it fare with you then? The paradise which is promised to the pious is not for you,' he continued, plunging at once, as usual with the Afghans, into the Koran; 'therein are rivers of incorruptible water and of milk, the taste whereof changeth not; rivers of wine, pleasant unto those who drink; and of clarified honey; and therein shall be fruit of a thousand kinds, and a pardon from the Lord. Shall the man for whom all these are prepared by the Lord of the Daybreak, be as he who must dwell for ever in the fires of hell, and will have boiling water given him to drink, which shall burst his bowels?'
And ever and anon Colville was treated to quotations much to the same purpose.
Seeing him one day gazing at a photo of Mary Wellwood, the sirdir became at once full of curiosity.
'One of your wives?' he asked.
'No; but one who is to be my wife, I hope.'