they would not fight against me. On arriving close to the Fort with my small escort, I found the garrison (some 300 men or so) occupying the walls and gates with their matchlocks in their hands, whilst many other tribesmen sulkily squatted on the spurs of the great mound on which the Fort stands. I trusted, however, to the information I had received, and went right into the Fort, examined everything in it, took note of the food stores it contained, got the few guns spiked, and after a stay of some five hours, returned unmolested to the British camp, very much to my own, and I also think to Lieutenant Massy's, relief and astonishment. I did not then ascribe our impunity to anything but sheer power of impudence; but from knowledge since acquired, I think it was greatly due to my being believed to be a saintly Mussulman, and presumably that very holy and reverend presentment of myself whom I had seen at Quetta! But, strange to say, this idea never struck me.

Some Hindoos in the Fort told me at the time-and the Ghilzaies who had preceded me, and who advised me to enter the Fort, subsequently confirmed the fact that a strong resistance was at first intended. Matters went so far that the enormous brass gun-apparently a 32-pounder and cast at Herat which was at the top of the Fort, and was much revered by the people, was actually loaded and fired a few hours before our arrival to ascertain its range. The firing of the first shot smashed the trail of the gun and made it useless. This misfortune was apparently very skilfully taken advantage of by my deluded disciples to work on Afghan superstition,

to the effect that the stars in their courses-alias my Doppelganger's influence-were not to be lightly fought against! The somewhat ignominious surrender of the Fort was, to us, the satisfactory result.

All through the time that I stayed at Khelat-i-Ghilzi, although in the depth of a terribly severe winter, our garrison fared sumptuously. The Ghilzaies, and especi ally the friends of the old gentleman whom my prayers might (or might not) have figuratively embalmed, not only betrayed to me every hidden cache of supplies buried in the ground and under the snow within a radius of twenty miles, but carried a daily post from Kandahar to Khelat-i-Ghilzi (for which, however, they were liberally paid) without the assistance of a single British soldier for a distance of about eighty-eight miles. This they did for about two months, although within a few days of the post being started four of them were murdered by the Durani villagers on the road. This service was rendered at a time when the post between Chaman and Kandahar (say about eighty-four miles), in far less dangerous country, had daily to be conveyed by escorts of native irregular cavalry. On our leaving Khelat-i-Ghilzi, the strong brigade which had occupied it returned to Kandahar on donkeys, ponies, camels, and bullocks, all of which were brought by my deluded disciples from their homes about Abistada. Not a single beast was available at the time from the Kandahar Army Transport, whence, as Sir Donald Stewart will remember, not one animal had to be sent to withdraw the Khelat-i-Ghilzi garrison.

A rude shock apparently was given to my saintly character, or rather to the belief therein of my

Ghilzaie friends, when I had to accompany Sir Michael Biddulph to Dehra Ghazi Khan along the Thul Chotiali road as a political officer. Some six or eight of them came with me; the others said plainly enough that they were useless to me outside their own country, and forthwith, on my leaving Kandahar, bolted with sundry Government postal horses. This proceeding, not to put too fine a point upon it, was theft; but that is a mere matter of detail according to Affghan methods of religious thought, where the property of the murshid (or religious teacher) is not much thought of, if not capable of indefinite powers of subdivision, à la loaves and fishes, amongst such of his shagirds (or religious pupils) as may happen to covet it.

On this occasion an old Khotuck Ghilzaie chief called Sado Khan, whose shrewd speeches Sir Donald Stewart doubtless remembers, and who was a great character in his way, put himself to considerable trouble to warn me against the Kakars, who then, and I now think very undeservedly, had a most unenviable reputation for treachery and fanaticism. Taking me aside with great precautions on the day of my departure from Khelat-i-Ghilzi, and putting his arms most affectionately round my neck, he whispered into my ear that as I was a Mussulman peer murshid (saintly teacher) I should not wear Feringi (European) clothes amongst the Kakars. He added that, if I did so, I should never let any of them come near me, and I should not mingle amongst them, without either first repeating the Kalima (Mahomedan creed), or at least holding up one finger and saying, "Allah yao dai" (God is one)! I did not then

understand that this old gentleman, who might have been my father, believed me to be that other reverend person, and that he (deluded elderly gentleman!) supposed he had previously met me at Mukkur in a clerical capacity. Sado Khan finished up by asking for the blessing of my nufs or "holy breath," and for the placing of my hands on his head, which I gave him with my best regards, and much to my own astonishment as to what he wanted it for. As will subsequently appear, Sado Khan had previously been a firm believer in my alter ego at Mukkur, as being a pir murshid or "saintly teacher"; and hence his unaccountable anxiety for my welfare, and his desire for my valuable benediction. He also put the same construction as my Ghilzaie friends upon the breaking of the trail of the big gun when fired.

With my return to Dehra Ghazi Khan in May 1879 ends the second act of my connection with my mysterious Doppelganger. I got some credit from the Government of India for my dealings with the people as a political officer in this phase of the Afghan war, and was in consequence rewarded with a Companionship of the Star of India. I certainly did my best; but by rights the chief credit should have gone to my Doppelganger, the rightful C.S.I., and not to me. Here ends Act No. 2 of this play.

Between 1883 and 1887, when a Brigadier-General commanding the troops on the Sind Peshin Railway, and also Chief Engineer of the line, the shadow of my double again fell on me at most unexpected times and places; and here beginneth Act No. 3. There were, according to the seasons,

from 12,000 to 18,000 Ghilzaie workmen on the railway, who came chiefly from the districts round Lake Abistada and Ghuznee. For about three and a half years it was the commonest thing for some of them to greet me on the works as the quondam popular preacher of these very fanatical and militant Mahomedan parishes. Major Scott, R.E., C.I.E., now Mint-master at Bombay; Mr Rose, C.I.E., the eminent engineer of the Khojak tunnel; Mr Savory, C.E.; Mr Woods, C.E.; and many other officers then serving on the railway, were told by their workmen, as undoubted facts, of my clerical goings on in the Mukkur pulpits, &c. Not only amongst the railway workmen was this so universally believed as to constitute a joke against me amongst my officers, but it was as firmly believed by numbers of native officials in the Baluchistan Agency. Dr Sutton of the Church Missionary Hospital at Quetta has lately told me that throughout that period his Affghan patients constantly spoke of me as the Mukkur priest who had become a Sahib. How these highly imaginative persons could reconcile the identity of a British general officer, and of a railway chief engineer, with that of the fashionable curate of the Mukkur mosque, I cannot attempt to explain. I can only record their undoubted belief in such an identity.

And here beginneth the fourth and last act of this queer drama! The ending is not over-satisfactory, as it does not conclude, like a three-volume novel, with a complete clearing up of all mystery, with the return of my virtuous Doppelganger, and the confusion of that fraudulent priest myself. In March 1892 I was appointed

Chief Commissioner in Baluchistan, having previously had, in deference to military etiquette when Quartermaster-General in India, to shave off my beard, and thereby to do away with the special feature which, by making me look like an Affghan priest, has been responsible for a comedy of errors from which I certainly have got something more than my fair share of advantages.

In May 1892, when travelling by rail in the Quetta district, I stopped at the Bostan Junction. I got out and walked about the platform. I noticed three Affghans looking eagerly into the carriages, as if looking for some one; and, as is my frequent custom, I asked them who they were and what they wanted. They said they had heard that "Browne Sahib," the new Agent to the Governor General, was in the train, and that they wanted to see him, as they were old friends of his. One was an elderly man over forty; the two others seemed about thirty. On my telling them who I was, the older man at once recognised me, but said I had cut off my beard, which had quite altered me, as it certainly had. He said his name was Syud Allum, and that he was the son of Mulla (Priest) Jungoo, the man I had lived with for two years when I was a mulla at Mukkur; that Mulla Jungoo himself was dead, but that his wife, who was apparently my ardent disciple, had heard that I was now in authority at Quetta, and had sent her three sons to renew our old acquaintance and to express her good wishes to me.

I mildly, but vainly, protested that I did not know this lady (Gula by name), but I was laughingly told that of course now I

did not care to admit knowing her, as I had become Lord of Baluchistan. Did I not remember, too, another lady called Zulika, who knew me just as well as Gula, and who also wished to be kindly remembered to me? This was said in evident good faith, and my best protests, in my best Pushtoo, only made matters worse, as the elder man remarked that it was really no use denying it; for did I not now make exactly the same mistakes as I used formerly to commit in grammar, and in pronouncing Pushtoo, when I lived with Mulla Jungoo and his wife? He at the same time proceeded to mimic my unsuccessful attempts at pronouncing sundry shibboleths peculiar to Pushtoo, and which, I suppose, must have been as great stumbling-blocks to my false presentment, Mulla Jungoo's guest, as they now are to me. The two younger men also knew all about me; but as they must have been boys when I was presumed to have been at Mukkur, they did not appear to remember so many embarrassing details.

After about half an hour's talk the train went on to Quetta; but I told Syud Allum, when he got there, to come and give me a complete account of the circumstances under which I had lived in his father's house. A few days afterwards I took down from him and from his brothers the detailed account attached to this narrative, which represents the story they told me, and in which they generally agreed. The statements are apparently quite genuine, and, for the first time, they brought to my recollection the man I had seen at Quetta in April 1878, by their reference to the white rough (Bedford cord?) sleeveless waistcoat, the chocolate

red turban peculiar to Bunnoo men, the worn-out Caubuli shoes, the big greyhound, and the stamped red-leather case or bag containing the Kalam Ullah (the Koran), presented as a gift. I now think it is more than possible that I am indebted to my extraordinary likeness to a man whom I have neither seen nor heard of since 1878 for an amount of influence in the country, and for a prestige as a holy priest, which are certainly not originally due to anything I ever did to acquire them. There seems little doubt that I have, for sixteen years past, been believed to be that particular other man, by numbers of people, and over a large tract of country. Although I have certainly taken no special trouble to combat this widespread belief, the survival of such a story over so many years can only be accounted for by the fact that when a story has once been implanted in a thick Affghan skull a crowbar is wanted to uproot it.

Syad Allum, after staying some weeks at Quetta, returned to Mukkur. He had told me that perhaps his mother might be induced to come to Quetta to see me a proposal which caused me some considerable embarrassment, and one that I did not warmly encourage. In September 1892 he returned, bringing me a somewhat dilapidated horse and two very handsome carpets as a present from his mother. He said she was now pretty well to do,—the Ameer, on her husband Mulla Jungoo's death, having apparently forgiven her reputed friendship with me, and restored her lands. Syud Allum further said, much to my relief, that under these circumstances this presumably elderly lady had thought it best not to

leave Affghanistan, as she might incur the Ameer's displeasure, but had sent me these presents with her best wishes. He himself thought the Ameer might not again be disposed to overlook any revival of our relations, as the latter had already come into possession of a number of my letters (?) when searching Mulla Jungoo's house during the Ghilzaie rebellion of 1886.

The sending of these presents seems to indicate that no interested motives have specially influenced the donors. They have never asked me for money, and appear content with maintaining the friendship formerly existing with the mysterious priest. The woman and her family are apparently the owners of lands, houses, &c. Every now and then some of the men turn up at Quetta, come and see me in a friendly manner, and talk over my (fictitious) sayings and doings as the fashionable Mukkur curate.

There can be no doubt that my double maintained a busy correspondence from Quetta, at some time between 1876 and 1878, with a number of influential Ghilzaie chiefs, and with the object of securing their co-operation in case of war in Affghanistan, and that I entered into his labours, very much to my own profit and astonishment. The relations apparently existing between him and his Mukkur friends will be appreciated from Syad Allum's statement, &c. They seem to have been based upon a strong friendship, which, on one side at least, appears still to exist.

On the first breaking out of the war in November 1878, the Ghilzaies who joined me helped me to make a decidedly adventurous reconnaissance over the Khojak

Pass down to old Chaman Fort, and thence over the Rogani Pass back to the British force then encamped at Hykulzaie. This reconnaissance took me fully fortyfive miles beyond what were then our extreme outposts. I owe it entirely to the Ghilzaies that I got back in safety, and I quite agree with what Sir Michael Biddulph says regarding it: "How it was you and your party were not cut off and barbarously murdered by the Achakzaies, I to this day cannot understand." It is certainly strange that I was not attacked, and although I no more appreciated it on that occasion than when I entered the fort of Khelat-i-Ghilzi, it is quite possible that I owed my safety to the saintly character given me, but very falsely, I fear, by my Ghilzaie disciples !

My relations with the Intelligence branch of the QuartermasterGeneral's department allowed me to make most careful inquiries in November 1892-i.e., subsequently to my seeing Syad Allum-as to whether there were any European or native explorers in or about the neighbourhood of Lake Abistada in 1876, 1877, and 1878. I ascertained that the only explorer who had ever been able to visit, much less to stay in, this hotbed of fanaticism, was the wellknown Bozdar explorer and surveyor, Khan Bahadur Imam Buksh, who, although himself a frontier man, barely succeeded in getting back with his life. Imam Buksh, having been employed under me in the Umbeyla campaign of 1863 on survey work, knew me perfectly well. He also states that when he visited Mukkur in 1876-78 he had constantly heard of my being there disguised as an Affghan, and of my exercis