I gave in at last, and turned my horse home again. I went into the inner room and sat on the charpoy. The Armenian shut all the doors and windows to keep out the heat, and propped me against the wall with pillows. Then the backache began. Oh, my bones! I was one great ache. The Armenian had seen the treatment I put others under, and he weighed out the medicines and brought them to me. I was too stupid with fever and aches to care what I took. Just then the British Agent’s Secretary, Amin Ullah, was announced. He was an interesting man, but I was compelled to greet him with lugubrious groans. He brought me five home letters, which my aching eyeballs would not allow me to read. [Sidenote: Postal Arrangements for the British Agent.] I used to send my letters through the Agent’s post in those days. He had a separate compartment in the Amîr’s post-bag which, by arrangement between the Government and His Highness, was locked and sealed. Once or twice the letters did not reach their destination, and it was said that some of the wild hillmen had pounced on the postman and carried off his bag. They might do the same to anyone carrying a bag, but it was never found out who were the robbers. Afterwards, I did not send my letters through the Agent’s post, but sent them direct to the Amîr’s post-office. His Highness allowed me to send and receive three letters monthly, free of postage. This was not so small a matter as it seems, seeing that in Turkestan the postage of each letter came to rather more than its weight in silver. All I had to do, therefore, was to stick on an Indian stamp. I found my letters arrived about as safely through the Amîr’s post as through the Agent’s, at any rate for some years. Afterwards, when we came to Kabul, I found there an Interpreter, a Hindustani, who was in favour with the Prince. He tried hard to get on as Interpreter for me; thinking, probably, that baksheesh from the patients could be worked; as I would not have him, he proceeded to intrigue against me. I did not take much notice of the man, knowing that he could not do much harm. However, he succeeded in getting hold of some of my home letters, which was sufficiently annoying, and once he placed me and the other Englishmen in Kabul in a position of no little danger: how this occurred I will relate presently. I got well of the fever in about a fortnight, and then I heard that both the Chief’s brother and the Mirza Abdur Rashid were still ill. I had thought that, of course, the medicine I had prescribed had been given them every day. No, everything was at a standstill, both with them and at the Hospital, just as I had left it a fortnight before; this is so truly Oriental. I, of course, visited them, and they rapidly got well under quinine.