“_My-bish!_”[206] Let him do as he likes! he is a demon, but God is stronger than the devil himself, and can certainly release us from the hands of this fiend, whose heart he has perhaps hardened to work out great ends by it; and we have risen again from bed with hearts comforted, as if an angel had spoken to them, resolved, please God, to wear our English honesty and dignity to the last, within all the filth and misery that this monster may try to degrade us with. We hope that, though the Ameer should now dismiss us with gold clothing, the British and Afghan Governments will treat him as an enemy; and this out of no feeling of revenge. He treacherously caused Stoddart to invite me here on his own Imayut-Nameh; and after Stoddart had given him a translation of a letter from Lord Palmerston, containing nothing but friendly assurances, which he could have verified, with our entire consent, at the Russian embassy, he pent us both up here, because we would not pay him as a kidnapper for our release, to die by slow rot, if it should appear that he might venture at last to put us altogether out of the way. We hope and pray that God may forgive him his sins in the next world; but we also trust that some human power will soon put him down from his oppressive throne at this capital, whence emanates the law by which the Khivans harry and desolate the roads and homes of the Persians. He wishes every soul to crouch before him, and not breathe God’s air freely without his leave, nor dare to be happy or at ease. For instance (and we are at the fountain-head of police reports), a poor wretch, confined without food for three days and nights in the Bug House, an infernal hole used for severe imprisonment, said incautiously, on being taken out, that he was alive and well. “He is, is he!” said the Ameer, on the report; “then put him in for three days and nights more.” Again, the other night, fifty-six grooms assembled at a house outside the city, to make merry on pilau and tea, with money liberally given by one of the Oosbeg men, Rahman Kool Tohsaba, to his head groom, who acted as master of the feast: they were convicted of having got together, so all that the police-master could seize received seventy-five blows each on the back with a heavy thorn-stick; and because one man uncomplainingly bore his punishment, which was inflicted on all before the King, he had him hoisted for seventy-five more, saying, “He must have been struck softly.” “But what was the crime in this innocent meeting of poor grooms?” we asked our gaolers. “Who knows?—he is a king, and gave the order.” The master of the entertainment stood with his dagger against some thirty policemen, till he was felled by a stone thrown at his head, to let all who could escape; for this heavier offence he was condemned to be thrown from a part of the citadel wall, which gives a culprit a chance of escape with only the