Then another unpleasant incident took place. Grunt was wearing Ellis's service dress jacket. Before we left Yozgad its brass buttons had been covered with cloth, so as not to flash in the sun or in the moonlight. One of the large front buttons, however, had during the days that followed escape become uncovered, and though we remarked upon the fact when Grunt put on the coat in the morning, it was not covered again. Now it caught the scholar's eye. He crawled along to Grunt and started fingering it. He knew something about buttons, he said, and that particular one was an English button. The scholar was no fool! Johnny was very contemptuous,--didn't the man know that it was a specially good Magyar button, and one of the latest pattern? The scholar certainly made for excitement. Now was committed a grave error that might have had disastrous results. A small bag containing ¼ lb. of tea had been brought along to the village, in order to propitiate the headman should need arise, and at this juncture Grunt thought fit to offer it to him, extolling its excellence as he did so. No sooner had the bag changed hands than to their horror the three saw that the word TEA was marked plainly on it in indelible pencil. Had the Greek seen it, he would almost certainly have been able to read a simple word like this, and the game would have been up. But once more the party's luck stood by them, and the incident closed with the headman putting the bag in his pocket. It was dangerous for our party to talk anything but Turkish, even amongst themselves. Hindustani might have been safe, but they did not think of it. Early in the morning we had decided what food should be demanded. The list was as follows:-- Five okes of meat (an oke equals 2¾ lbs.) Eight okes of raisins. Twenty " bread. Ten " wheat. Eight " cheese. Half an oke of butter. One " honey. Half " tobacco. 150 eggs. Of course we did not expect to be able to obtain all these, but they were now asked for. As each item was named, the price was discussed by all the occupants of the room except the wretched buyers. Usually the price first mentioned was fairly moderate, but in a short time they had run it up amongst themselves as if they were bidding at an auction. They then turned to the buyers and said "such a thing costs so much," and the buyers were hungry enough to swallow any price. It is a trait of Turkish commerce that no article ever has a fixed value. Finally 23½ Turkish pounds were paid in advance for the stores.