After spending some time comparatively quietly in the hills, Hussein Bey had recommenced his raids into the low country, and his practice of exacting blackmail from travellers. Attacking one day a rich caravan which had crossed the mountains in safety from Persia, he met with an unexpected resistance, which was speedily accounted for by the arrival of a body of the Pasha’s troops, who had been on the march from one town to another, and to whom the merchants had sent a swift messenger imploring help. The robber band was hopelessly outnumbered by the combined forces of the troops and the armed servants of the travellers, and a short conflict ended in the death of Hussein Bey and the utter defeat of his followers. In this way Ahmed Khémi Pasha was freed from the son who had for so long been a thorn in his side, and the Bey’s mother and grandmother and their fellow-plotters were left without an object for their schemes. All their arrangements were useless, and they recognised this fact after a good deal of mutual recrimination on the subject of the delay which had occurred. It was undeniable that Hussein Bey’s death had been so utterly unexpected that the wisest head could not have arranged the _dénoûment_ of the plot in time, and nothing more could be done. CHAPTER XXI. CONFEDERATES. After this, things went on quietly enough until it was a year and a half since Charlie had left Baghdad. Only a year now remained of Cecil’s stay at the Palace, and Azim Bey was growing so tall and manly that she felt it was quite time he should soon leave her care. He was just fourteen and a half, but looked much older than his age, and he had made wonderful progress in his studies. He was an excellent talker and a most agreeable companion, with a wide theoretical acquaintance with modern political and social problems, and a deep practical knowledge of Eastern ways of settling them. There was something uncanny in such shrewdness in a boy of his age, and fond though Cecil was of him, she could now never quite trust him. The subject of Charlie had not again been mentioned between them, although Cecil sometimes felt curious to know whether her pupil had got over his childish dislike. Since the discovery of the fate of their first six months’ letters, she and Charlie had corresponded with more success, owing to the precautions they had adopted. Charlie’s letters were addressed to Sir Dugald at the Residency, and Cecil posted hers there after Sir Dugald had written the address. The abstraction of the earlier epistles had been traced to an Armenian post-office clerk who had died in the interval between the discovery of the theft and the investigation subsequently made into it, and although for this reason no punishment could be inflicted, the desires of any who might be anxious to tread in the offender’s footsteps were frustrated. Whatever the suspicions of the would-be thieves might be, they dared not stop a letter addressed by or to the Balio Bey himself.