At dawn I started, accompanied by six guards, and passed the spot where I was looted thirty hours before. My guards did not leave me till I got to Maxsūd Beg, which is out of the dangerous part of the country, and I got to Kūmishah, where my patient was, without further adventure, in the afternoon; but I was compelled to ride with my feet out of the stirrup-irons, as I could not bear them to be touched, and they were much swollen. Here I was able to attend to my patient, who was in a sufficiently critical condition; however, I was in time, and he recovered. In contradistinction to my treatment at Yezdikhast, the post-house keeper at Kūmishah lent me a brand-new suit of clothes, and provided me with food during my stay in Kūmishah; my patient was too ill for me to be his guest, and his servants had deserted him; this postmaster lent me also four pounds in silver. My friends in Ispahan sent me clothes, and on my patient’s convalescence I rode in there after five days. As I came near Marg and approached a narrow pass called the Orcheeni, the gholam of the telegraph with whom I was riding pointed out, on the face of the cliff at the part where the road narrows, some dozen men with guns, crouched behind boulders and rocks. “They are stopping the way, sahib; there are probably more in the pass, and if once we go in we shall be caught.” _Vacuus viator_ is all very well, but even though I had nothing left to be looted of, if I sang, I preferred not to do so _coram latrone_, so we turned off to the right by a camel road that also leads to Marg, keeping on quietly till we were detected, for at first the thieves could not see that we had left the road; but as soon as they did, they rushed out to cut us off; the distance was the same for both, but we were mounted, and we screwed a canter out of our steeds and got safely away. I met with no further adventure on that journey to Ispahan, but my experience of Oriental brigands is not a pleasant one. Of course it is much pleasanter to pose as a hero; but with my revolver, had I fired on being surrounded, I should have been blown out of my saddle. Captain Pierson, then acting director, wished to send in a claim for compensation to the Persian Government, but this was not done. Had I been a Russian subject it would have been otherwise. The value of all my kit was, however, repaid to me. Nothing more at the time was heard of the robbers; no effort was made to arrest them. The country was at that time demoralised by the terrible famine, but afterwards four of my thieves fell into the hands of the king’s uncle, the present Governor of Shiraz; he is a severe man, and they (including Lutf Ali) were built up alive in brick pillars on the high-road just outside Abadeh, and left to die gradually, perishing as their victim the Syud did. The pillars and bones may be seen on the roadside, and, like our old gibbets, are a terror to evil-doers. CHAPTER XXV. SHIRAZ.