Fairies are generally supposed to inhabit the lonely mountains around, and although they are believed to be, on the whole, a good sort, the people are more inclined to give them a wide berth than risk too much by loitering about those places the fairies are supposed to haunt. They are described as twelve to eighteen inches high, very fantastically dressed, and going about in a follow-my-leader manner, dancing and skipping as they go. They are believed to be afraid of men, and to hide themselves from them, and so are only seen by those who are in hiding or sleeping in out-of-the-way places. Of children they are said to have no fear, but it is unwise to let a child stray near their haunts, as it may be put under a spell, or perhaps changed for one of their own children, who is made to take the face and form of the stolen child, and then the changeling will bring all sorts of bad luck upon its foster-parents. [Illustration: GROUP OF AFGHAN GUARDS AND SERVANTS—TAKEN IN COMPOUND OF MY HOUSE—KITCHEN AT THE BACK. [_To face p. 80._] The supernatural being the people dread most, and to whom they put down much that happens which cannot be satisfactorily explained, is the shaitan. Shaitans are demons who take many forms according to the fear or gift of exaggeration of the individual who thinks he has seen one. These beings they imagine may be behind any bush or boulder after sundown, and they also believe them capable of coming into the sleeping-room at night to frighten them into fits by their very ugliness, if nothing worse befalls, so the people sleep with head as well as body covered with blanket or rezai. They never sleep alone in a room, but several together, and many have been astonished when I told them that in my country each person has a separate room, if possible, and that children are put to sleep alone at night. They say it is not that they really fear a shaitan, for God is good, but they are not accustomed to sleeping alone, and, besides, it is unwise to be alone at night should a spirit happen to come in. One of my servants solemnly assured me one morning that the night before his charpoy (bedstead) was lifted from the floor and swung round the room with him on it until he felt giddy, and at the same time he heard the most strange noises. He, however, admitted, on being questioned, that he kept his eyes firmly shut and saw nothing, and no doubt his head was wrapped close in the bedclothes. However, he wanted another room to sleep in, and refused to occupy that room again, and whether the other servants played him a trick or whether it was a bad attack of indigestion that troubled him I could not discover, but the room he slept in was afterwards used as a store-room by the other servants, and the name it acquired was sufficient to deter the servants who came after him from sleeping in it.