The Hidden Treasure
" Are you sure," they asked me, " that these are un-
believers' (Gabri) graves, and not graves of die children of
Adams"
They think of the pre-Islamic Zoroastrians as a race of giants,
not human; for they people the world, as most simple folk
have peopled it, with a primitive society of Titans destroyed
by the advent of Jove. And Shah Riza, squatting in the dust
of the labourers, and filling his paper cigarette tubes, peered
down at intervals at the strange shapes of the tree roots among
the bones to see if the horns which he expected were not really
there on the foreheads of the Gabri.
It was ten-thirty before the end of our labour and the
satisfactory disentanglement of those who had worked and
must be paid and those who had not, but hoped to be paid
likewise. We did not retrace our way, but climbed due
westward up the slope of the ravine on to the pasture-land at
a lower point than yesterday, and rode pleasantly with the
world spread round us. The flat lands of Dusan and Beni
Parwar were below us on our right, and Siah Pir beyond:
and over its shoulder we could see more plainly than ever
before the hills of Lakistan. Oak trees were dotted park-like
about us, and the sky so blue over our heads made their
leaves white against it, motionless as the wings of a kite in
the sun.
The Dusani guide knew of a Hindimini camp on these
uplands, conveniently near us at noon. We turned aside and
found it scattered about a large enclosure fenced with boughs
where its flocks were kept. Children, even more naked in
their rags than usual, gathered in a shy crowd at a little distance,
while the young master of the tent, which was so poor that
the branches of its central oak tree had not even been roofed,
came out to hold my stirrup as we dismounted.
Yet nothing, you might imagine, could have delighted him
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