"Cheer up! let me try my hand;" said the lady; and the couple went together to the village, where they found a bridal party just leaving the church. What measures were taken by the woman history (prudently) sayeth not; but within half an hour bride and bridegroom were pulling one another's hair, and the friends of each were taking part in a very pretty fight. "Now you can stay here and be happy," said the woman of Sat to her friend. "Thank you," said Satana, "But while you are here, I really think my presence would be superfluous." One is completely outside the power of the Government in the Barzan-Neri district, but not quite out of touch with its officials notwithstanding. In one of the remotest of villages, in a deep gorge running up into the Sat range, and called Bi-Kar, we actually found a Government mudir. It is true that he had no power; and any collecting of taxes that took place in the neighbourhood was done by wholly unauthorized agencies; but there he was, presumably as a testimony to the existence of the _Hukumet_. Like most Ottoman officials, he was delightfully courteous to the chance visitor; and in this case perhaps the welcome was not mere politeness, but real joy in speaking to an educated man once more. For years in that remote glen, he had enjoyed no conversation with any but policemen and Kurds. His story was typical of those of a good many of the young Ottoman official class. Educated at Stamboul, in the college for Government servants, he had (like most of the younger men of his day) been attracted by the "Young Turk" propaganda, and its hopes for a reformed and revived Ottoman Empire. Something brought his reforming sympathies to light; and a prompt order from Abdul Hamid dispatched him to this corner of the earth, with a black mark against his name, and no chance of promotion, or any sort of career. Three years passed in that exile, and then the revolution gave him some hope of a change. But the years that had elapsed since then had only been evidence that he was forgotten by the new régime as thoroughly as the old one could have wished; and here was he, an educated and capable man, settling down while still under thirty as a soured, disappointed minor official. He was one of the many tragedies of Ottoman rule.