“I don’t understand,” murmured Ferrers again, and reeled against the Mirza, who laid him on a divan, and called for the servants. Still half unconscious, the prisoner was stripped of the horrible rags he had worn in the prison, and clothed afresh in rich native garments. His wounds were dressed, food and cooling drinks were brought him, and he was left to rest in comfort and security. CHAPTER XVI. “ENGLAND’S FAR, AND HONOUR A NAME.” His arrival at the Mirza’s house was the beginning of what appeared, in contrast with the days that had gone before it, a period of perfect bliss to Ferrers. The extreme peril of his position, and the danger which would face him if he wished to leave the city, occurred to him only as considerations that enhanced the comfort of the present moment. He had nothing to do but to enjoy life within somewhat circumscribed limits, and to feel his strength returning day by day under the care of the Mirza and his household of obsequious slaves. From time to time the Mirza would appear perturbed, and a question would elicit the admission that a rigorous search was being made, now in one part of the city and now in another, for the escaped prisoner. But Ferrers thought this an excellent joke; and under its influence the gloomy brow of his host would also relax, for was not the Mirza the keeper of the prison, and was not his house the last place where the fugitive would be sought? Still, there were certain precautions to be taken, and for gratitude’s sake Ferrers was careful to observe them. He found that the Mirza was far more strict in the performance of his religious duties than he had ever known him--in fact, the man who had posed at Shah Nawaz as a freethinker was here the most orthodox of Moslems, and Ferrers, as became a disciple, also reformed his earlier heterodox behaviour. In the course of his adventures in disguise at Bab-us-Sahel he had gained a fair working knowledge of the points of Mohammedan ritual; now he became acquainted with its extremest minutiæ, even to the incessant use of the Fattha, or first verse of the Koran, with which, in the contracted form of “Allahu!” the devout Gamaris were wont to preface most of the actions of life. Even had any of the slaves been ill-disposed, they could have alleged nothing against the orthodoxy of their master and his disciple; but they seemed to vie with one another in showing a deference to Ferrers only second to the veneration with which they regarded the Mirza.