This comrade of his was not disposed to take vengeance (as might perhaps have been expected) on all and sundry Englishmen for the loss of his arm. Having expressed his sense of what was befitting, and provided us with an instance of the survival of tribal responsibility, for which as students of history we were bound to be grateful to him, he went on his way and we saw him no more. Gradually our relations with our neighbours improved. It is difficult to keep up malice against a man who provides good "English salt" (quinine); and thus folk became interestingly, but almost inconveniently, friendly. What ought one to do, when the wife of a Kurd, who has got into trouble with his Agha, asks for your intercession; and all the Christians in the neighbourhood, as well as the man's own friends, assure you that the object of their prayer is a very good and charitable man, barring the fact that he commits murders occasionally? What is the really "fit and beautiful" in the following cause matrimonial, when the applicants come and throw themselves in the road at your horse's feet, and declare that you are welcome to ride over them, but get up they will not, till you have promised them redress? Jevdet, a worthy Kurd of Ghara (outlaw, of course, like every man in that happy Alsatia), betrothed his daughter Amin to a neighbour, Tewfik, in settlement of a debt owed to the latter.[147] However, Amin rebelled and ran away to a worthy old man of Amadia, one Abd-l-Aziz, who is a sort of universal uncle to all the neighbourhood, and is at the bottom of most local intrigues. Abd-l-Aziz, resourceful man, thought that an alliance with the damsel's family would be valuable; so he betrothed her at once to a nephew of his own, and reported her to her parents as "lost, and I don't know where to find her." Presently, however, Amin, being a lady, changed her mind--mollified by the news that Tewfik had actually spent the sum of £20 to get possession of her--and got a letter through to him somehow, begging him to come like a true lover, and rescue her from the consequences of her own actions. Under these circumstances Jevdet and Tewfik both came and threw themselves at the feet of the writer and the Consul, assured us that they had no hope save in Allah and ourselves, and begged for redress! Yet of all the negotiations in which we were engaged, that which sticks most in our memory is the matter of Abdurrahman the Kurd, and the difficulty first of getting him into prison and afterwards of getting him out. Abdurrahman had the impudence to rob a messenger who was bringing down letters to us. He took everything except the letters themselves (which was courteous) and allowed the messenger to come wading through the winter snow to our house, clad in nothing but the envelope.