Page:In Black and White - Kipling (1890).djvu/17

 Cherat. I was gone twelve days only; but I had said that I would be fifteen days absent. This I did to try her, for it is written:—"Trust not the incapable". Coming up the gorge alone in the falling of the light, I heard the voice of a man singing at the door of my house, and it was the voice of Daoud Shah, and the song that he sang was "Bray wara yow dee—all three are one". It was as though a heel-rope had been slipped round my heart and all the Devils were drawing it tight past endurance. I crept silently up the hill-road, but the fuse of my matchlock was wetted with the rain, and I could not slay Daoud Shah from afar. Moreover, it was in my mind to kill the woman also. Thus he sang, sitting outside my house, and, anon, the woman opened the door, and I came nearer, crawling on my belly among the rocks. I had only my knife to my hand. But a stone slipped under my foot, and the two looked down the hill-side, and he, leaving his matchlock, fled from my anger, because he was afraid for the life that was in him. But the woman moved not till I stood in front of her, crying: "woman, what is this thou has done?" And she, void of fear, though she knew my thought, laughed, saying:—"It is a little thing. I loved him, and thou art a dog and cattle-thief coming by night. Strike!" And I, being still blinded by her beauty for, my friend, the women of the Abazai are very fair, said:—"Hast thou no fear?" And she answered:—"None—but only the fear that I do not die". Then said I:—"Have no fear". And she bowed her head and I smote it off at the neck-bone so that it leaped between my feet. Thereafter the rage of our people came upon me, and I hacked off the breasts, that the men of Little Malikand might know the crime, and cast the body into the water-course that flows to the Kabul river. ''Dray wara yow dee! Bray wara yow dee!'' The body without the head, the soul without light, and my own darkling heart—all three are one—all three are one!

That night, making no halt, I went to Ghor, and demanded news of Daoud Shah. Men said:—"He is gone to Pubbi for