"On Tuesday night (June 14, 1842) their quarters were entered by several men, who stripped them and carried them off, but I do not know whether it was to the Black Well or to some other prison. In stripping Colonel Stoddart a lead pencil was found in the lining of his coat and some papers in his waist. These were taken to the Amir, who gave orders that he should be beaten with heavy sticks till he disclosed who brought the papers, and to whom he wrote. He was most violently beaten, but he revealed nothing. He was beaten repeatedly for two or three days. On Friday the Amir gave orders that Colonel Stoddart should be killed in the presence of Captain Conolly, who should be offered his life if he would become a Muhammadan. In the afternoon they were taken outside the prison into the street, which is a kind of small square. Their hands were tied across in front. Many people assembled to behold the spectacle. Their graves were dug before their eyes. "Colonel Stoddart's head was then cut off with a knife. The chief executioner then turned to Captain Conolly and said: 'The Amir spares your life if you will become a Mussulman.' Captain Conolly answered: 'I will not be a Mussulman, and I am ready to die!' saying which he stretched forth his neck, and his head was then struck off. Their bodies were then interred in the graves which had been dug." For a long time the fate of these two officers was unknown in England, and, indeed, overshadowed by the greater disaster in Kabul. Then a missionary, the Rev. Joseph Wolff, undertook a journey to Bukhara, and after many sufferings and dangers, ascertained that they had been murdered two years before. He did not, however, come across the little Prayer-Book, which appears to have been lying about in some shop in Bukhara for seven years after the officers' death, when a Russian officer, passing through the bazaar, happened to light on it. He picked it up, and, observing its interesting nature, purchased it from the shopkeeper. For another fourteen years the little book was lying on his table at St. Petersburg, when a visitor who knew Captain Conolly's relations saw it, and obtained leave to take the precious relic and place it in the hands of the relatives of the deceased; and thus, twenty-one years after her brother's death, Miss Conolly obtained the full account of his sufferings, written with his own hand.