Startled and justly enraged by an insult so sudden and so foul, Denzil drew back with his hand on his sword. As his assailant was quite unarmed, he had no intention of drawing it unless farther molested. He looked round in vain for a choukeydar (or policeman) and saw only a gathering crowd with black-gleaming eyes and swarthy malevolent visages closing round him. How the affair might have ended there is little difficulty in foreseeing. He must have been slaughtered on the spot, but for the intervention of a splendidly equipped horseman, who at that critical moment rode up, and seizing him by the arm waved the people back by his sabre, and assisted by his followers, six juzailchees, half led half dragged Denzil from the bazaar into the open street. "Are you mad or weary of your life, Sahib, that you venture into Cabul in the present state of the city, and, more than all, to-day?" asked his protector, sternly. "Why particularly to-day, Mohammed Khan?" said Denzil, greatly ruffled, and now recognising the tall, thin and yellow visaged Wuzeer of the Shah. "Alas! ye are but as swine!" was the complimentary reply. "Know you not that it is Friday--a day set apart by the devout for solemn fast and prayer, in commemoration of the holy prophet's arrival at Medina; and because on that day God finished the great work of creation?" "I never thought of all this, Khan," replied Denzil, whose heart was yet furious against the fanatical jeweller; and he might with truth have added, that so far from thinking of the prophet he thought only of Rose Trecarrel. The narrow streets were nearly involved in darkness now. They were destitute of all lamps; and thus, provided the Wuzeer could elude the crowd that followed clamorously from the bazaar, he would not have much difficulty in effecting the escape of Denzil, whose blood they fiercely and furiously demanded, crying aloud that one of the faithful had been assaulted, robbed and half murdered by a Kaffir, a Feringhee, and so forth. The six juzailchees who formed the escort of Taj Mohammed Khan, and who were soldiers of the Shah's 6th regiment (a portion of the same force that General Trecarrel had come up country to command) now fixed their long bayonets and kept back the pressure of the crowd, many of whom had now drawn their swords. The high, narrow thoroughfare re-echoed with barbarous yells, and Denzil felt that he was in a very awkward scrape.