For more than a year Azim Bey continued to be sulky on the subject of the Mission-school, although in everything else he was a pattern pupil. His intended career as a public benefactor seemed destined to end abruptly with Charlie Egerton’s appearance in the Yehudis’ parlour, and Cecil could not be wholly sorry for this, since political feeling in the city was not in a state to make house-to-house visitation either safe or pleasant. Matters were going rather badly in the pashalik just now. Two or three scanty harvests had been followed by famine, and the general distress was increased by the fact that the Pasha, who was much in want of money, had chosen this singularly inopportune moment for imposing a duty on the importation of foreign corn, a course which was strongly resented. Bands of marauders infested the country districts, and the constant expeditions necessary to keep the main trade-routes open involved an expenditure of men and money which could with difficulty be met. Hussein Bey, the Pasha’s disaffected eldest son, who had been “lying low” for some time, had reappeared as the leader of one of these bands, and was doing his best to stir the populace to revolt. His wrongs, in being set aside for his younger brother, who was being brought up as half a Christian, were in every one’s mouth, and many people did not scruple to attribute the misfortunes of the province to the malign influence of the Englishwoman who was scarcely ever absent from Azim Bey’s side. The position she enjoyed in the Palace was constantly attributed to witchcraft; and there were even those who said that things would never be right in Baghdad until Azim Bey and his governess were--well, disposed of. By degrees matters went from bad to worse. Riotous mobs beset unpopular officials in the streets, and more than one house was attacked and rifled. The Pasha shut himself up in the Palace, with a strong guard on duty night and day, and none of the household ventured out without an escort. When Cecil went to the Residency she was attended by a small army of soldiers and cavasses, and even these could scarcely keep back the howling mobs. Still no actual danger touched her personally, and she was inclined to adopt Sir Dugald’s consolatory opinion that the bark of the Baghdadis was always worse than their bite, and that the latter might be considered, in mathematical language, as a negligible quantity, when something came to pass one day which showed her in what a perilous position she and her charge really stood at this time.