The boys stood in the doorway and tried vainly to pierce the darkness about them. The sky was clear and starlit, but there was no moon, and the mountains, which seemingly nearly surrounded them, were black and without form, and shut out most of what light there would otherwise have been. In front of them was the narrow, level space on which they had landed when they climbed the ladder, and beyond that fell a slope which appeared, in the gloom, to be set with knobs. Whether those knobs were rocks or buildings the boys could not tell. They thought, however, that they must be buildings, else what had become of the village? Back of them rose the mountains. “What do you make of it, Sid?” asked Raymond, still in a whisper, for they had a sort of feeling that there were people near. “I can’t make anything of it. If this is a town, and I suppose it must be, it’s the most curious one I ever heard of. We’ll just have to wait till daylight, and I hope we shan’t find then that we are in the midst of a hornet’s nest of savage mountaineers.” “We’d better go into that room and get some sleep,” said Raymond; “I begin to feel pretty used up after that run uphill. I should think you’d be too, with the heavy load you had to carry.” “Yes, it was a hard stunt. What do you say to pulling the ladder up, Ray? Then if anybody comes into the alley they can’t get up here without bringing another ladder.” “That’s a good idea, Sid. It takes you to make things safe.” “And it takes you, Ray, to clear the road of undesirables. What do you think that fellow down in the alley will do when he comes to his senses? I don’t suppose you really killed him?” “I’m afraid not, his cap was too thick. I don’t know whether he will imagine that we came up here, or not.” “You know when he said there was no other village near, I told him that we should have to go back to Timour Khan Shoura. I wanted to fool him, and maybe he’ll think we have started back that way.” “I hope he will, and chase after us.” While the boys were talking, they carefully drew the ladder up and laid it down, well back from the edge. Then they went into the room, opened up their blankets close to the wall on one side of the door, and in about a minute were both fast asleep. CHAPTER X IN HIDING When the boys woke in the morning, they were obliged to think several minutes in order to remember and comprehend their situation. Only twenty-four hours before they had waked in the ravine, after their nerve-trying battle with the bandits, the misguided men whom they had left lying there on the ground. Then followed their precipitate arrest, and the escape which had been accomplished in such darkness that it seemed a miracle that they should have been able to get away at all. They wondered if they had chanced upon the one route that led to, perhaps, the only unoccupied house in the village.