d kleptomaniacs. The khan is
a person of a highly sanguine temperament and possesses a headstrong
disposition; coupled with his perverted notions of meum and tuum, these
qualities will some fine day end in his being brought up with a round
turn and required to part company with his ears or nose, or to be turned
adrift on the cold charity of the world, deprived of his hands by the
crude and summary justice of Khorassan. His eyes are brown and large, and
spherical almost as an owl's eyes, and they bulge out in a manner that
exposes most of the white. He wears long hair, curled up after the manner
of Persian la-de-da-dom, and in his crude, uncivilized sphere evidently
fancies himself something of a dandy.

The mirza is quiet and undemonstrative in his manners, as compared with
his social superior; and as becomes a person gifted with the rare talent
of composing and writing letters, his bump of cautiousness is several
degrees larger than the khan's, but is, nevertheless, not large enough to
counterbalance the pernicious effect of an inherited and deeply rooted
yearning for filthy lucre and a lamentable indifference as to the manner
of obtaining it.

The mudbake is the oldest man of the three, and consequently should be
found setting the others a good example; but, instead of this, his
frequent glances at my packages are, if anything, more heavily freighted
with the molecules of covetousness and an eager longing to overhaul their
contents than either the khan's or the mirza's.

"Pool, pool, pool--keran, keran, keran," the probable amount in my
possession, the amount they expect to receive as backsheesh, and kindred
speculations concerning the financial aspect of the situation, form
almost the sole topic of their conversation. Throwing them off their
guard, by affecting greater ignorance of their language than I am really
guilty of, enables me to size them up pretty thoroughly by their
conversation, and thus to adopt a line of policy to counteract the
baneful current of their thoughts. Their display of cunning and rascality
is ridiculous in the extreme; fancying themselves deep and unfathomable
as the shades of Lucifer himself, they are, in reality, almost as
transparent and simple as children; their cunning is the cunning of the
school-boy. Well aware that the safety of their own precious carcasses
depends on their returning to Khorassan with a receipt from the Khan of
Ghalakua for my safe delivery, there is little reason