At many of the places stopped at were men who had come to meet those friends or relations who had been to England, but it was at Chaman that the Afghans first got news of their relatives. When first meeting a friend they embrace three times, first to the right, then to the left, and then to the right again, after which streams of question and answer follow. It was touching to see the eager questions after the triple embrace, and to see some turn away crying, possibly at the news of the death of a relative, or it may have been that they were overcome at meeting with friend or relative. While superintending the unloading of baggage from the goods train at the Chaman terminus, before crossing the frontier, I noticed the Kotwal, one of the prince’s staff who accompanied him on his visit to England, sitting on some boxes and looking very glum. He knew sufficient Urdu to carry on a conversation, and so I asked what troubled him. He sighed, and said that he had just heard that his brother in Kabul had been made prisoner, and now his own enemies—may their fathers be cursed!—had taken advantage of his brother’s downfall to poison the Amir’s mind against him, and he was told that if he returned to Kabul it was probable the Amir would kill him. So he had thought it over, and concluded that it was better he should go back to Karachi and stay there with some friends until he could return with safety, and he asked me to help him in getting away by the next train. To help in the running away of one of the chief officials of Kabul would have been a bad introduction for me to the Amir, and it seemed hard not to help a man to escape death, as he said, and he knew the Amir’s ways; so, saying I would think it over and make inquiries about the trains, I left him, wondering how best to arrange the difficulty. I ascertained that there would be no train before nightfall, and at that time we were due at the Afghan camp across the frontier, so, as there was no necessity to take immediate steps in the matter, I went on with the work in hand.