where other men would only suffer signal defeat. His journey to Gamara seemed to justify him in this opinion, for it was a triumph of what a later age has learnt to call bluff. Taking with him only his personal servants, he attached himself, for the greater part of the way, to a trading caravan, and speedily made himself the chief person in it. It could only be some very important man, with unlimited power behind him, who would dare to adopt such an insolent demeanour, and bully his travelling companions so unconcernedly, thought the merchants. Somewhat sulkily they accepted him at his own valuation, and the marches and halting-places came to be settled by reference to him. He it was also who rebuked the guides when it was necessary, bringing those haughty mountaineers to reason by displaying a proficiency in many-tongued abuse which astonished them, and who forced the headmen of inhospitable villages to turn out of their own houses for his accommodation. True, the merchants sometimes looked forward with misgiving to the next time they would traverse these regions, when there would be no champion to help them; but such a splendid opportunity of paying off old grudges was not to be let slip, and the caravan led by the overbearing Farangi was long a proverb on the route. When the mountains had been crossed, and the irrigated plains of Gamara were in view, the caravan broke up into several portions, and Ferrers pursued his way to the city in company with one of these. His heart was high, for his reputation had preceded him, and the villagers received him with marked respect. It was clear, he thought, that the men who went before him had failed by going to work too gently, and truckling to the prejudices of the people. The right thing was to go on one’s way regardless of opposition, to browbeat the haughty and meet the insolent with an insolence greater than their own, and in general to act as no sane man, alone and without support in a hostile country, could be expected to act. The natives, like his fellow-travellers, would conclude that he had some mysterious reserve of strength, or he could never be so bold. Thus he saw without misgiving the distant masses of green which marked the neighbourhood of the city, and rode calmly along the narrow dikes, which were the only roads between the sunken fields, without a thought of turning back while there was time. Dimly seen through their screen of trees, the brick towers and earthen ramparts of Gamara had nothing very terrible about them, and was not Ferrers entering the place as an accredited envoy, with permission from the Khan to reside there until the business on which he came was done? Even the contemptible little dispute into which he was forced by the action of the officials at the gate, who wished to make him dismount from his horse, did not trouble him. What did it signify that the law of Gamara forbade a Christian to ride in her streets? He, at least, was going to ride where he liked,