It was true. We had both taken considerable pains with Wrexham day after day trying to push Greek into him, and I must say we had succeeded passably well in that he could now make shift to read the language easily. We had brought up a pocket edition of the more famous classics and one or two modern books with us, and every day during our long journey from India he had spent an hour or two, and sometimes a great deal more, in study. Conversation was, of course, his weak point, although Forsyth and I had endeavoured to make him talk to us in a combination of modern idioms and old classical Greek. “We shall look pretty silly if they don’t talk Greek or if they’ve got some special brand of their own,” said Wrexham. “Well, if they do talk it, it’s sure to be different after all the centuries they must have been here. Consider American after a mere hundred years and a bit. But the basis will probably be unchanged, and pronunciation and idiom can be picked up pretty quickly when you’re actually among the people. Besides, if they’ve been cut off from the rest of the world, they will have been saved from new importations from other tongues, so that the only changes will be definite alterations of old forms. Some find to take back home for the philologists. I can see myself writing a treatise on phonetic changes through the ages in a pure tongue.” It was strange how Forsyth spoke as though we knew the people in those hills would speak Greek. And yet he only voiced all our thoughts. We had long ago ceased to think there was any doubt in the matter, and only wondered what sort of a reception we should get and what manner of life we should find them leading. We speculated a good deal on that point, but none of us had any very clear theories. Forsyth favoured some kind of city-state, such as he was familiar with from his readings of the classics. Wrexham, on the other hand, I think, expected to find a mixture of Arabian Nights Bagdad with a prehistoric Pathan village. I had no very clear-cut ideas on the point at all. “I’ll tell the men we don’t start till 7.30 to-morrow,” said Wrexham, “and then I vote for bed. We may as well get a good sleep, for Heaven alone knows whether we shall get one to-morrow night.” He went over to the men’s fire, for we found a certain amount of reeds by the stream brink, and the men had taken the opportunity to make up a fire--a comforting thing to sit over, after the miserable oil-stove which was all we had had for cooking during our desert journey. We turned in a few minutes later, and my last recollection of that night is of Wrexham gravely asking Forsyth whether the ancient Greeks understood the “Kamerad” gesture. CHAPTER VIII THE GATE “Look, sahib, the hills open in front like a Waziristan _tangi_,” said Payindah, pointing.