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EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

one of the parties. Old family quarrels were continued
with the knife instead of through the law. A few houses
were sacked for loot. A few wealthy shopkeepers were
mourned ever afterwards by their relatives.

Ram Prasad, my old friend of the white breeches, was
found in the morning with his throat cut. He had, it was
said, extorted too great a tax from all who wished to
enter the service of the King in his Majesty's garage.
He would no longer drive the big black Rolls that was a
present from the King of England. He would no longer
show me or anybody else what the little sporting Rolls
could do on Kabul's best public highway.

Ram Prasad had overdone it, and he died in the same
artistic manner as many another minor potentate died
that night.

Dawn broke. The sun struggled through the mists of
the hills before it reached another mist lying over Kabul.
The black cloud drifted, not from the dew gathered by
the sunbeams, but from the carnage of the night. Kabul
was scarred and eaten away with fire.r Hardly a wall
stood whole outside the native city. Blackened ruins
showed their ugly sides, and in many a road there were
the loathsome remains of a public execution. The smell
hung heavily on the morning air. Burnt flesh could
be traced, and the sharp tang of gunpowder. But
the Palace still stood, wrecked but inviolate, . for
the mob never knew that inside its walls only a few
survived to fight on under the whip of Amanullah's
tongue.

The attackers had drawn off, to reap the advantage of
their descent into Kabul from their lonely villages. The
townspeople took the easier course. There was food for
the asking. There was drink for those who wished to
celebrate their immunity from the bullets of " the
traitor King." The merchants bribed them off from

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