and ride he did. It was when he had passed triumphantly through the gate that he was first conscious of a sense of uneasiness, of a feeling that a net was closing round him. The city boasted flourishing bazaars, and streets bordered by canals of clear water and shaded by trees, but his way did not lie through them. Possibly by reason of his self-assertion at the gate, or merely in order to avoid the crowds which thronged the business part of the town, he was led through the dullest bylanes of the residential quarter. The narrow alleys through which he passed looked absolutely blank, the houses on either side presenting nothing but high bare walls to the public eye. Their roofs were flat, and such windows as there were looked into the inner courtyards. It was like passing a never-ending succession of prison-walls with occasional doors. Where the line was broken by a mosque, which generally served also as a college, there was some little relief in the shape of stately dome and lofty minaret, and occasional dashes of colour produced by the use of enamelled tiles; but it gave forth a throng of young fanatics clad in black, who made outrageous remarks about the Kafir, which were as audible to their object as they were intended to be. For convenience’ sake, and to avoid attracting a crowd round him by his mere presence, Ferrers had made the journey in native dress; but he had not attempted to alter his appearance in any other respect, and his fair colouring rendered him distinguishable at once. Having presented his credentials to the favourite who occupied the position of the Khan’s foreign minister for the nonce, he was received with suitable compliments, and assured that his arrival had been expected, and a house and servants prepared for him. He was half afraid that this house might prove to be within the circuit of the inner wall enclosing the hill on which the Khan’s palace and the public offices stood, in which case he would have anticipated the possibility of foul play, but it turned out to be one of the ordinary houses of the town. It was furnished sufficiently, according to oriental ideas, with carpets and cushions; the servants in it accepted with remarkably little friction the direction of those he had brought with him; and when he had seen to the securing of the door opening into the street, he felt that what looked like a prison from without might be a fortress from within. CHAPTER XV. A LAND OF DARKNESS AND THE SHADOW OF DEATH.