d the gateway of the sanctuary. Kissing
the threshold of the tomb, I said my prayers with all the fervency of
one who has got safe from a tempest into port.

My friend the dervish arrived soon afterwards, and immediately urged
upon me the importance of saying my prayers, keeping fasts, and wearing
a long and mortified countenance. As he assured me that unless I made a
pretence of deep piety I should be starved or stoned to death, I assumed
forthwith the character of a rigid Mussulman. I rose at the first call,
made my ablutions at the cistern in the strictest forms, and then prayed
in the most conspicuous spot I could find.

By the intensity of my devotion I won the goodwill of Mirza Abdul
Cossim, the first _mashtehed_ (divine) of Persia, and by his influence I
obtained a pardon from the Shah. Now that I was free from the sanctuary,
I became anxious to gain some profit by my fame for piety; so I applied
to Mirza Abdul Cossim, who straightway sent me to assist the mollah
Nadan, one of the principal men of the law in Tehran. My true path of
advancement, I believed, was now open. I was on the way to become a
mollah.

Nadan was an exemplary Mussulman in all outward matters; but I was not
long in discovering that he had two ruling passions--jealousy of the
chief priest of Tehran, and a hunger for money. My earliest duty was to
gratify his second passion by negotiating temporary marriages for
handsome fees. In these transactions we prospered fairly well; but
unfortunately Nadan's desire to supplant the chief priest led him to
stir up the populace to attack the Christians of the city, and plunder
their property. The Shah was then in a humour to protect the Christians;
consequently, Nadan had his beard plucked out by the roots, was mounted
on an ass with his face to its tail, and was driven out of the city with
blows and execrations.

Once more homeless and almost penniless, not knowing what to do, I
strolled in the dusk into a bath, and undressed. The bath was empty save
for one man, whom I recognized as the chief priest. He was splashing
about in a manner that struck me as remarkable for so sedate a
character; then a most unusual floundering, attended with a gurgling of
the throat, struck my ear. To my horror, I saw that he was drowned. Here
was a predicament; it was inevitable that I should be charged with his
murder.

Suddenly it occurred to me that I bore a close resemblance to the dead
man. For an hour or two, at an