“Forward!” ordered King. After another quarter of a mile of stumbling among hot boulders, not one of which was big enough to afford cover, or shelter from the sun, another volley whistled over them. Their hands went up again, and this time King could see turbaned heads above a parapet in front. But nothing further happened. “Forward!” he ordered. They advanced another two hundred yards and a third volley rattled among the rocks on either hand, frightening one of the mules so that it stumbled and fell and had to be helped up again. When that was done, and the mule stood trembling, they all faced the wall. But they were too weary to hold their hands up any more. Thirst had begun to exercise its sway. One of the men was half delirious. “Who are ye?” howled a human being, whose voice was so like a wolf's that the words at first had no meaning. He peered over the parapet, a hundred feet above, with his head so swathed in dirty linen that he looked like a bandaged corpse. “What will ye? Who comes uninvited into Khinjan?” King bethought him of Yasmini's talisman. He, held it up, and the gold band glinted in the sun. Yet, although a Hillman's eyes are keener than an eagle's, he did not believe the thing could be recognized at that angle, and from that distance. Another thought suggested itself to him. He turned his head and caught Ismail in the act of signaling with both hands. “Ye may come!” howled the watchman on the parapet, disappearing instantly. King trembled--perhaps as a racehorse trembles at the starting gate, though he was weary enough to tremble from fatigue. The “Hills,” that numb the hearts of many men, had not cowed him, for he loved them and in love there is no fear. Heat and cold and hunger were all in the day's work; thirst was an incident; and the whistle of lead in the wind had never meant more to him than work ahead to do. But a greyhound trembles in the leash. A boiler, trembles when word goes down the speaking-tube from the bridge for “all she's got.” And so the mild-looking hakim Kurram Khan, walking gingerly across hot rocks, donning cheap, imitation shell-rimmed spectacles to help him look the part, trembled even more than the leg-weary horse he led. But that passed. He was all in hand when he led his men up over a rough stone causeway to a door in the bottom of a high battlemented wall and waited for somebody to open it. The great teak door looked as if it had been stolen from some Hindu temple, and he wondered how and when they could have brought it there across those savage intervening miles. With its six-inch teak planks and bronze bolts its weight must be guessed at in tons--yet a horse can hardly carry a man along any of the trails that lead to Khinjan!