"I thank you; 'to her I love,' repeated Waller tremulously, while a flush suffused his cheek.
"You are very sad and gentle," said Joharah.
"The thoughts of _her_ make me so," said Waller.
"Ah! the perfume of her presence is about you still," said the Afghan woman in her figurative language; "she has been unto you what the rose was to the piece of clay in the little story of Sadee."
"'One day,' says Sadee, 'when I was in the bath, a friend of mine put into my hand a piece of sweetly scented clay. I took it between my fingers, and said,
"'Art thou musk or ambergris, for thy perfume charms me?'
"'I was but a humble piece of clay,' it replied; 'but I was some time in the society of a rose; the sweet quality of my companion was communicated to me, otherwise I should be only a bit of clay, as I appear to be.' So has it been with you."
"Perhaps so," replied Waller, smiling at this strange anecdote.
"A hundred of our miles!" thought Waller, and his spirit sank.
"Undisguised, you can never escape my husband's people, or hope to reach it safely; but I shall provide for all that."
"You will not deceive me?" said Waller anxiously, as he feared some snared
"No, I swear it; be of good courage and you shall soon be safe."
The following day, when most of the shepherds had gone to prayer at a musjid among the mountains, leaving the women and female children behind, as the sexes never pray together in the mosques, she conducted Waller into the inner portion of their tent--her own apartment--where discovery would have ensured him instant death. With scissors she clipped off closely his long fair beard and mustaches; she stained his face, ears, and neck with walnut juice and wood ashes; his hair she disguised by smearing it with more ashes and _ghee_--a process under which Waller, usually so dainty in his toilet, rather winced. She took away and buried his poshteen and tattered uniform, and made him, in its place, put on the red dress of a Hindoo Fakir. She slung a brass drinking lotah to his girdle of cord, gave him some chupatties and other food, and, placing a staff in his hand, showed him the route to pursue, a narrow path among the mountains, by which he could avoid a rencontre with the returning shepherds, and strike on the direct road for Jellalabad.