Bokhara, will be able to judge the Ameer’s conduct better than we are. On the 19th (May) the Topshee-Bashee paid us a visit of a few moments, after keeping away for two months. He mentioned that a man with a name like Noor Mohumnud had come three or four days before from Persia, bringing a load of things for Stoddart, of which the Dustan Kanchee had forwarded a list to the Ameer—probably the articles which should have accompanied Lord Palmerston’s letter. The Huzrut, the Topshee-Bashee said, would doubtless, on his return, be gracious to us, and give us fine robes of honour, and treat us even better than before. About sunset on the 23rd, as Stoddart and myself were pacing up and down a small court of twenty feet long, which encloses our prison, one of the citadel doorkeepers came and desired us both to sit down in a corner; we complied, wondering what would follow, and presently saw heads peering at us from the adjoining roofs, when we understood that the Ameer’s heir, a youth of seventeen, had taken this way of getting a sight of the Feringhee Elchees. We must have given him but a poor impression in the remains of our clothes, and with heads and beards uncombed for more than five months. On the 23rd, Jooma Bai was accosted by a man named Makhzoom, known to Stoddart, who gave him a token, and a note written in such bad grammar as scarcely to be understood, in which he said one Juleb arrived lately from Khiva, mentioned that he saw Pottinger Sahib there, and another person named Moosa having come, bringing a letter from Pottinger Sahib, who, he says, is at Khiva, with the Elchee of Mahomed Shah. Authentic history here terminates. Beyond this all is doubt and conjecture. On the 28th of May, Stoddart despatched an official letter to the Indian Government,[212] which was forwarded with Conolly’s journals; and at this point we lose altogether the track of the footprints which the Bokhara captives have left on the great desert of time. That they perished miserably is certain. “No change has taken place in our treatment,” wrote Stoddart—it is the last sentence penned in the Bokhara prison which seems to have reached its destination—“though hopes, so long proved to be deceitful, are held out to us on the return of the chief.” But the Ameer, glutted with conquest, returned from the Kokund expedition, and ordered them out to death. They died by the hands of the public executioner. But the precise period of their death is not with certainty to be ascertained.