sideration; but
it serves its purpose of affording an interesting insight into the
character of my escort.

The poor mirza and the mudbake are, no doubt, fully justified in
entertaining the worst opinions possible of the khan; he is a sad
scoundrel, on a small scale, to say the least. While they are growling
out to each other their grievances and apprehensions, that artful schemer
is riding his poor horse miles and miles over the stony hills to the
camping-ground of some hospitable Eliaute chieftain, from whom he can
obtain goosht-i-goosfany for nothing, and come back and say he bought it.

Several miles are slowly travelled by us three, when, no sign of the khan
appearing, we decide upon a halt until he rejoins us. In an hour or so
the bizarre figure of the absentee is observed approaching us from over
the hills, and before many minutes he is welcomed by a simultaneous query
of "chand pool?" (how much money?) from his keenly suspicious comrades,
delivered in a ludicrously sarcastic tone of voice.

"Doo Tceran," promptly replies the khan, making a most hopeless effort to
conceal his very palpable guilt beneath a transparent assumption of
innocence. The mirza and the mudbake make no false pretence of taking him
at his word, but openly accuse him of deceiving them. The khan maintains
his innocence with vehement language and takes refuge in
counter-accusations. The wordy warfare goes merrily on for some minutes
as earnestly as if they were quarrelling over their own honest money
instead of over mine. The joint query of "chand pool?" gathers an
additional load of irony from the fact that they didn't seem to think it
worth while to even ask him what he had bought.

Across the pommel of his saddle he carries a young kid, which is now
handed to the mudbake to be tethered to a shrub; he then dismounts and
produces three or four pounds of cold goat meat. Before proceeding again
on our way we consume this cold meat, together with bread brought from
last night's rendezvous. By reason of his social inferiority the mudbake
is now required to assume the burden of carrying the youthful goat; he
takes the poor kid by the scruff of the neck and flings it roughly across
his saddle in a manner that causes the gleeful spirits of the khan to
find vent in a peal of laughter. Even the usually imperturbable
countenance of the mirza lightens up a little, as though infected by the
khan's overflowing merriment and the mudbake's rough handling