Harry Lake and I last parted in 1920 near Sorarogha in Waziristan, on the Indian frontier—I bound for home on leave, he in charge of the picketing troops, whose business it was to ensure the reasonably safe passage of wearied soldiery like me through the knife-edged hills, where the Mahsud snipers made night noisy and day sometimes dangerous.

I have known him on and off for many years. Stationed together before the war, our paths led apart in 1914—he to France with his regiment, I to East Africa with mine—to meet again in a London hospital in late 1915. With him once more in India in 1917, I then lost sight of him for over two years, till January, 1920, brought us together in a rather noisy brawl in Mahsud Waziristan, where the tribesmen were taking exception to our military promenade up their pet valley.

I know his people slightly, more particularly his sister, Ethel Wheeler, to whom he refers in his story, but she does not often favour me with letters. It was somewhat of a surprise, therefore, when in October last year, while a student at the Staff College, Quetta, an English mail brought me a bulky parcel and a letter from her, enclosing one from Lake, in which was the following passage:

I don’t know if you are still doing anything in the author line, but if you are you might amuse yourself editing this record which I have made up from my diary. You are always keen on out-of-the-way places, and in sending this off, on the very shadowy chance of it ever reaching home, it occurred to me that you might like to see it, so I am telling Ethel to pass it on to you. If you care to get it published, you[x] are welcome, the more so since I think the world could do with such a record of simple adventure as an antidote to the kind of stuff appearing when I left civilization.

[x]

I opened the parcel that night and dipped into the stained pages. There was a good deal of work on hand, but I’m afraid it got left over, for it was past four in the morning before I turned the last pages with a rather dazed brain, but a firm determination to edit the story. The kind assistance of Miss Douie—sister of a fellow-student—enabled me to get it typed in the little spare time snatched—mostly very late at night—from a strenuous course of instruction; while the local knowledge of Central Asia of Major Blacker—another fellow-student—was of the greatest help in following Lake’s rather hieroglyphic record of his journey to Sakaeland.

Whether red-gold-haired Aryenis and her grave-eyed 

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