THE HOUSE OF
THE FALCON
CHAPTER I
THE ROOF OF THE WORLD
Men drop out of sight there. This one did. Or, no, I shouldn't say that. He went up out of sight. You see, he was carried.
Yes, right out of the city up toward the top of the world—at least that's what the natives thereabouts call the mountains, where the spurs of the Thian Shan meet the Himalayas. About five thousand men saw him go.
And not one of 'em cared to follow.
They were natives of course, all sorts—Chinese, beggarly Sarts, Mussulman traders, Kirghiz shepherds and what not. He was a white man. The other Europeans in Kashgar were all in the new city, the Chinese city, where the taotai and the missionaries are. He had come to the old city of Kashgar, by the dried-up river. He rode—uncommonly well, they say—across the wooden drawbridge and under the arch into the thick of the bazaar section.
Not that he'd lost his way. In fact he seemed to be looking for some one in the bazaar where he must have known there were no foreign barbarians—only
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