close by, and proceeds to regale himself with bread and figs,
meanwhile casting fugitive glances at the bicycle. Presently he advances
closer, gives me a handful of figs, squats down closer to the bicycle,
and commences a searching investigation of its several parts.

"Where are you going?" he finally asks. "Meshed." "Where have you come
from?" "Teheran." With that he hands me another handful of figs,
remounts his horse, and rides away without another word. Inquisitiveness
is seen almost bristling from the loose sleeves and flowing folds of his
sky-blue gown, but his over-whelming sense of his own holiness forbids
him holding anything like a lengthy intercourse with an unhallowed
Ferenghi, and, much as he would like to know everything about the
bicycle, he goes away without asking a single question about it.

Shortly after parting company with the sanctimonious seyud, I encounter a
prosperous-looking party of dervishes. Some of them are mounted on
excellent donkeys, and for dervishes they look exceptionally flourishing
and well to do. As I ride slowly past, they accost me with their
customary "huk yah huk," and promise to pray Allah for a safe journey to
wherever I am going, if I will only favor them with the necessary
backsheesh to command their good offices.

There are some stretches of very good road across this desert, and I
reach Aivan-i-Kaif near noon. There has been no drinkable water for a
long distance, and, being thirsty, my first inquiry is for tea. "There is
a tchai-khan at the umbar (water-cistern), yonder," I am told, and
straightway proceed to the place pointed out; but "tchai-khan neis" is
the reply upon inquiring at the umbar. In this manner am I promptly
initiated into one peculiarity of the people along this portion of the
Meshed pilgrim road, a peculiarity that distinguishes them from the
ordinary Persian as fully as the shaking of their heads for an
affirmative reply does the people of the Maritza Valley from other people
of the Balkan Peninsula. They will frequently ask you if you want a
certain article, simply for the purpose of telling you they haven't got
it. Whether this queer inconsistency comes of simon-pure inquisitiveness,
to hear what one will say in reply, or whether they derive a certain
amount of inquisitorial pleasure from raising a person's expectations one
moment so as to witness his disappointment the next, is a question I
prefer to leave to others, but more than once am I brough