The Mutesalim was to accompany his Excellency into the field, to see how a little war of this kind ought to be conducted, with the prospect of almost certain disgrace and probable death if any disaster occurred to the Pasha’s arms, or any mishap ruffled the Pasha’s temper. Although in the course of his eventful life Ahmed Khémi had been under fire more than once, he was not a soldier, and the Mutesalim thought the outlook sufficiently dreary to send on a message to his household telling them to leave Sardiyeh and go into hiding before the Pasha’s arrival, that they might not be exposed to his vengeance. When the arrival of the caravan at the fort disclosed the fact that the ladies’ apartments were untenanted, the Mutesalim explained that he had sent away his family in order that there might be more room for his Excellency’s household, and the Pasha was graciously pleased to accept the excuse. The rooms vacated proved, however, insufficient to meet the needs of the party, and for Cecil and her pupil, with their attendants, accommodation was found in the best house in the little town by the simple process of turning the inhabitants out to make room for them. Whether the rightful owners quartered themselves in turn upon their neighbours, or whether they retired to the stables or the kitchen, Cecil could not discover, but she was inexpressibly thankful to have once more a little domain which she could call her own. CHAPTER XXIII. THE END OF EVERYTHING. The journey through the upland country had not been at all a pleasant one to Cecil, quite irrespective of the continual alarms due to the attacks of the insurgents. From the very day on which they left Hillah, Jamileh Khanum’s behaviour had become markedly and inexplicably disagreeable. She seized every opportunity of heaping slights on Azim Bey and his governess, and her servants followed her example. Travelling, as they did, humbly in the rear of the harem procession, which was headed by the gorgeous _takhtrevan_, with its velvet cushions and curtains of cloth-of-gold, in which reposed the Khanum Effendi and her boy, the little band who formed the household of Azim Bey were exposed to many unpleasantnesses. It became almost a matter of course that Cecil should find, on reaching the village where the night was to be spent, that the Khanum Effendi and her household had appropriated all the accommodation, leaving her and her party no choice but to camp in the courtyard. She herself would have been willing to sacrifice much for the sake of peace, but Azim Bey was by no means like-minded, and the difficulty was generally settled by a tremendous quarrel between the respective servants, in the course of which Masûd, armed with a whip and his young master’s authority, turned out the intruders in sufficient numbers to secure Cecil and the other women a resting-place where they would be tolerably free from the attacks of the mosquitoes and other pests of the region.