The singularity of his costume, the regimental colour of bright yellow silk with its massive gold embroidery, amid which the sphynx was conspicuous, with the mottoes "Badajoz, Salamanca, Bladensburg, Waterloo," and so forth, appeared so remarkable, that the old Kuzzilbash chief conceived, in his simplicity, that he had captured at least a great Nawab or Bahadur of Feringhistan, whose ransom or value as a hostage could not fail to be of importance. Hence, resolving to say nothing of his prize to Mohammed Ackbar Khan, of whose power he had already become jealous, Shireen ordered four juzailchees to alight, sling their rifles, and carry the dhooley with its inmate to the rear, naming some place to which the prisoner was to be conveyed, and they obeyed, but grumbling under their beards that they were only "carrying that which ought to be killed." Moreover, they were not without serious fears that, instead of being a Nawab or lord, Denzil might be a sorcerer, for these sphynxes and gold letters looked necromantic in their sight, and he might possess the power by a word to turn his bearers into yaboos or four black stones. He remained perfectly passive and, perhaps, indifferent in their hands. His wound had bled profusely, and he was now in that state of extreme prostration which usually succeeds a great loss of blood, when the senses wander, and wild dreams, tangled and incoherent visions, disturb the brain of the sufferer. He felt very heedless of life; but there are times when death seems to avoid those who are so, and who fear him not. In all the misery of his condition he had but one consolation--that Sybil knew nothing of it. As his bearers trod on, he heard them, when occasionally they stumbled against a dead body, burst out into anathemas against the Feringhees, whom they stigmatised as "dogs, devils, sons of Shytan, sons of burnt fathers, and base-born Kaffirs," all of which gave him little hope for his ultimate safety. The dusk of the January eve was closing in, when, after passing for some miles through a sheltered and well-wooded valley, the sides of which were studded by several castles or bourges, the strongholds of Nawabs and Khans of military tribes, the dhooley-bearers arrived at the arched gateway of the great country residence of the chief of the Kuzzilbashes. It was, as usual with the Afghans, whose state of society is pretty much what it was among the Scots in the feudal days, a square fort, measuring about a hundred yards each way, with solid wa;ls twenty-five feet in height, and flanked at each corner by a strong half-circular bastion. A fausse-bray and deep ditch surrounded it, the latter being filled by a canal cut from the Cabul river.