to gain; nobody would believe us; and the scene ended by our
being driven out of the tent in custody of the naib, who was ordered
to confine us until the chiefs of the village should have been actually
brought to the camp, and confronted with us.

When Shir Ali and I were left to ourselves, he immediately endeavoured
to make me a partaker of the spoil, and offered to give me up half of
it.

'Not so, my friend,' said I; 'it is now too late. If you have drank
and enjoyed the forbidden wine, and have got a headache by it, it is
no reason that you should endeavour to make me sick too. I have had a
lesson, in which you have acted as master, which will satisfy me for
this time.'

He then endeavoured to make me promise to stand by him, when we should
be confronted with the ked khoda, and to swear through thick and thin to
everything that he intended to advance; but I was too much alive to
the consequences to make any such promise. He said that if once he were
brought to the felek to receive the bastinado, he knew that he could not
survive it; for so universal a terrorist had he been when operating upon
the feet of others, that now he felt he should be treated without
the least mercy; and he therefore swore upon the Koran, that he would
undergo every misery rather than be tied to the stake.

When the time came for being called up again before our chief, Shir Ali
was nowhere to be found. He had absconded, and when I was interrogated,
all that I could say amounted to this,--that I knew he dreaded the idea
of being bastinadoed, and that I supposed he had made off to escape it.

As soon as I appeared before my judge, the men of Kadj Sawar, who were
already standing before him, declared one and all, that I had neither
exacted nor received anything from them; but, on the contrary, that I
had urged them to make a considerable present to the khan. They poured
out the whole of their complaints against Shir Ali, who they declared
had put the finishing stroke to their misery, and had even torn off the
new skin that had began to cover their old wounds.

All this was slowly working for my advantage, and paving the road to my
promotion. The story had got abroad, and was in every one's mouth. I was
looked upon as a paragon of moderation.

'This comes from having been a doctor,' says one; 'wisdom is better than
riches.'

'He knows the doctrine of consequences,' says another; 'his feet will
never be where his head should be.'

In sho