Public Ledger

HONOR AMONG THIEVES.

A Remarkable Instance of Self-Devotion.

Bellew, in his account of the mission which he accompanied into Afghanistan, tells a most remarkable story, which may be quoted as illustrating not only the determination of which the race is capable of, but of a sense of honor—such was the word the relator used, and although it is only honor among thieves, there was mixed with it a desire for the honor of the family to which the hero of the story belonged, which would be creditable anywhere.

The person who tells the tale was called Khan Gul, and he was one of the actors in it. The whole of his family had, at a former period, become a band of robbers, seemingly on the sly, and their neighbors were kept in the dark about their doings. They had determined on robbing a house at some distance; going there through the night they made a hole in the mud wall. Khan Gul's brother, like Oliver Twist, was passed in, and he began to hand out whatever was within his reach.

The people of the house chanced to waken up, upon which the brother tried to make his escape, but while in the act of returning through the hole in the wall, those on the inside caught him by the feet. Now began a tug like the "tug of war;" fiercely they pulled to get him out of the wall, but it was useless; those within had one or two holding to each leg, and the burglar was held as if in a vise. The fear that they would be recognized and detected became at last the dominant feeling, and, as they could not possibly pull him out, they determined on an extreme measure, and one so very extreme that it is hard to believe it could have occurred to no others than these knife-using Afghans.

The only plan left to prevent identity was to cut off his head, carry it away and leave the body; and the striking part of the tale lies in the fact that it was done at the suggestion of the man himself, and, as he expressed it at that instant, so that "the honor of the family might be preserved undefiled." This was done. They fled with the head only, leaving all the spoil which had been thrown out, and as Khan Gul ended the story, he thanked God that the honor of the house had been by these means preserved. There is something heroic in such acts. Neither Agamemnon nor Achilles, as described by Homer, suggests a character capable of such self devotion.