hich convinced
neither party, and consequently we immediately adjourned to the _daroga_
or police magistrate, who, we agreed, should decide the question.

We found him at his post, at the cross streets in the bazaar, surrounded
by his officers, who, with their long sticks, were in readiness to
inflict the bastinado on the first offender. I opened the case, and
stated all the circumstances of it; insisting very strongly on the
evident intention to cheat me, which the horse-dealer had exhibited. The
horse-dealer answered me, and showed that as the horse did not belong to
him, it being stolen from another, he had no right to pay for its keep.

The question puzzled the daroga so much, that he declined interfering,
and was about ordering us to the tribunal of the cadi, when a decrepit
old man, a bystander, said, 'Why do you make so much difficulty about
a plain question? when the horse-dealer shall have paid the hajji the
remaining half of the price of the horse, then the hajji shall pay
for the keep of the beast, as long as it was in the horse-dealer's
possession.'

Every one cried _Barik Allah! Barik Allah!_ Praise be to God! and right
or wrong, they all appeared so struck by the specious justice of the
decision, that the daroga dismissed us, and told us to depart in peace.

I did not lose a moment in repaying to the horse-dealer the
purchase-money of the horse, and in getting from him a receipt in full:
it was only after he had settled with me that he began to ponder over
the merits of the decision, and seemed extremely puzzled to discover
why, if he was entitled to the horse's keep at all, he was not entitled
to it, whether he had paid me half or the whole of the money? He seemed
to think, that he for once had been duped; and very luckily his rage
was averted from me to the daroga, who he very freely accused of being a
puzzle-headed fool, and one who had no more pretension to law than _he_
had to honesty.

CHAPTER XVII

He puts on new clothes, goes to the bath, and appears in a new
character.

I now looked upon myself as clear of this unpleasant business, which I
had entirely brought on my own head, and congratulated myself that I had
got off at so cheap a rate. I again made my way to the cloth bazaar, and
going to the first shop near the gate of it, I inquired the price of red
cloth, of which it was my ambition to make a _baruni_, or cloak; because
I thought that it would transfer to me that respect which