Ahmed stood for a few moments looking down at Shagpur, then turned to pursue his way. He had a fowling-piece slung at his back; his intention was to ascend the hills for perhaps another thousand feet, to a spot where he would probably come upon a small herd of black-buck. But he had not mounted far from the place at which he had paused when he halted again, and, putting his left hand above his eyes to shield them from the sun's rays, gazed steadily in a direction away from the village. Below him the plain stretched for many miles, bare and desolate, though when the rains came by and by it would be clothed with verdure. Scarcely a tree broke its level, and so parched was it now that no beast could have found sustenance there. But far away Ahmed's keen eye had descried what appeared to be a speck upon the horizon, and he watched it intently. There was nothing unusual in the sight itself. Many a time he had seen just such a speck in the sky, watched it grow in breadth and height, until it stretched across the plain like an immense wall, thirty miles long, a thousand feet high. He had seen it approach like a monstrous phantom, driving before it, as it were, circling flights of kites and vultures, enveloping the bases of the hills, shutting out the sun with yellow scudding clouds. But such a dust-storm ordinarily swept over the plain southwards: Ahmed had never seen one approach from the west; and after a long and steady gaze at the speck, which grew slowly in size, he suddenly dropped his hand, uttered an exclamation in the Pashtu tongue, and turning his back began to retrace his course, at a speed vastly greater than that at which he had formerly been moving, towards his distant village. The moving speck had resolved itself into a band of horsemen. They had been too far away for him to distinguish individuals and know who and what they were; but, considering the quarter from which they were coming, his instant thought was that they were an enemy, and it behoved him to give his people warning. In that wild country of the border raids were frequent enough. Especially was a warning necessary to-day, for the village was in poor condition to defend itself. Only the day before, Rahmut Khan, his father, had ridden out with all the younger men to raid horses on the British frontier. Ahmed shrewdly suspected that tidings of this expedition had been conveyed to Minghal Khan, the chief's inveterate enemy and rival, and Minghal had taken advantage of it to make the attack for which he had no doubt long awaited a favourable occasion. And what occasion could be more favourable than the absence of the old warrior on an enterprise from which, if at once successful, he could not return for five or six days, and which, if he found himself at first baulked in it, might occupy him for a fortnight?