By five o’clock next day the inspection was over. The streets had been swept for the Excellency--which is to say Saadat--the first time in a year. The prison had been cleaned of visible horrors, the first time in a month. The last time it was ordered there had been a riot among the starving, infested prisoners; earth had been thrown over the protruding bones of the dear lamented dead in the cemetery; the water of the ablution places in the mosque had been changed; the ragged policemen had new putties; the kourbashes of the tax-gatherers were hid in their yeleks; the egregious Pasha wore a greasy smile, and the submudir, as he conducted Fielding--“whom God preserve and honour!”--through the prison and through the hospital, where goat’s milk had been laid on for this especial day, smirked gently through the bazaar above his Parisian waistcoat. But Fielding, as he rode on Selamlik Pasha’s gorgeous black donkey from Assiout, with its crimson trappings, knew what proportion of improvement this “hankypanky,” as Dicky called it, bore to the condition of things at the last inspection. He had spoken little all day, and Dicky had noticed that his eye was constantly turning here and there, as though looking for an unwelcome something or somebody. At last the thing was over, and they were just crossing the canal, the old Bahr-el-Yusef, which cuts the town in twain as the river Abana does Damascus, when Dicky saw nearing them a heavily-laden boat, a cross between a Thames house-boat and an Italian gondola, being drawn by one poor raw-bone--raw-bone in truth, for there was on each shoulder a round red place, made raw by the unsheathed ropes used as harness. The beast’s sides were scraped as a tree is barked, and the hind quarters gored as though by a harrow. Dicky was riding with the mamour of the district, Fielding was a distance behind with Trousers and the Mudir. Dicky pulled up his donkey, got off and ran towards the horse, pale with fury; for he loved animals better than men, and had wasted his strength beating donkey-boys with the sticks they used on their victims. The boat had now reached a point opposite the mudirieh, its stopping-place; and the raw-bone, reeking with sweat and blood, stood still and trembled, its knees shaking with the strain just taken off them, its head sunk nearly to the ground.