The Amîr approved of the whisky, and requested me to write at once to Mr. Pyne to order three casks. In due time they arrived. A day or two afterwards the Amîr had an alarming head symptom. He described his feelings when I went to see him. There was a sort of aura passing from the feet to the head, buzzing in the ears, headache, and a feeling of great heaviness in the head. I was afraid the symptoms might be the forerunners of an apoplectic, or some nervous seizure. Happily, however, the head symptoms gradually subsided, and two days afterwards the pain had returned to the limbs. Meanwhile, I had got to work again at the Hospital. The severer cases had accumulated considerably, and I had several surgical operations to do. One was a Stone operation on a small boy, which interested Prince Habibullah very much. The boy got well very quickly, and I took him, with a Workshop accident case that had recovered, to the Durbar that the Prince was holding in the Salaam Khana. During the Amîr’s illness, Prince Habibullah had relieved His Highness of a great deal of Governmental work. Sitting for hours nearly every day, he held Durbars and gave decisions in cases of dispute. He was the Chief Civil Magistrate of the town. Minor cases were decided by the “Kôtwal,” or Chief of the Military Police of Kabul. In addition to these Civil Magistracies there is an Ecclesiastical Court, presided over by the Chief Priest, the “Khân-i-Mullah Khan,” for the Priests are those who are learned in the Mahomedan law. There is always, however, the final right of appeal to the Sovereign: though I have heard the Amîr himself apply to the Khân-i-Mullah for instruction on certain points of law. [Sidenote: Duties of the Princes.] The duty of Prince Nasrullah was to superintend the management of the Government offices, and the work of the numerous scribes and secretaries--the Mirzas. Both Princes worked hard, and one met them in all weathers, in the blazing sun, in the hissing icy winds, the heavy snow fall, or the pouring rain, riding on their way from their houses in the city to the Durbar Hall, or the Mirza’s offices, in the Erg Palace. With their regular and daily attendance upon their duties, they shamed many of the high officials of the Kingdom, and were a living and daily lesson to the ordinary Afghan, whose motto is ever, “To-morrow, or after to-morrow.” [Illustration] CHAPTER XXV. A KABUL WINTER.