Aylo then told Bruce that Welled Hawaryat, the son of Ras Michael, had arrived from the camp ill of a fever, which was supposed to be the smallpox; and Janni having reported that Bruce had saved the lives of many young people at Adowa, the iteghe, or queen-mother, had sent to desire that he would come the next morning to her palace at Koscam. Accordingly, Bruce, dressed in a Moorish costume, and attended by his landlord and Yasine, went early the next day to Ayto Aylo, and thence, with their heads uncovered, the whole party rode in state to Koscam, where they alighted, and were shown into a low room in the palace. Ayto Aylo went by himself to his mistress the queen, with whom he remained more than two hours. On returning to Bruce, he said that Welled Hawaryat had received much benefit from a saint of Waldubba, who had administered some medicine, which consisted of certain characters written with common ink upon a tin plate, and then washed off and given him to drink. Aylo therefore dismissed Bruce, but appointed a meeting with him at his own house in the evening. When Bruce returned home, he found that Petros, Janni's brother, had arrived from the army, and was waiting for him. Alarmed by the priests, who had told him of Bruce's arrival at Gondar, Petros (as has been already stated), in great tribulation, had fled to consult Ras Michael. On approaching his tent, however, he suddenly recognised the stuffed skin of a very intimate friend swinging from a tree and drying in the wind. Terrified and horror-struck at the spectacle, he was scarcely able to communicate to a person who met him the intelligence of Bruce's arrival; and, as soon as he had done this, without seeing the ras, he returned, haunted by the ghost of his friend's skin, to Gondar, in still greater fear than he had left it; and even there continued to be so much alarmed, that Bruce found it necessary to give him some laudanum, and send him to bed. He had scarcely retired, when Ayto Aylo came to Bruce to say that Welled Hawaryat was so very ill, that his mother, Ozoro Esther, the beautiful wife of old Ras Michael, and the iteghe, or queen-mother, desired that Bruce, on the following day, would come to see him, and some others who were also sick. "Look!" said Bruce to Ayto Aylo, "the smallpox is a disease that will have its course; and, during the long time the patient is under it, if people feed them and treat them according to their own ignorant prejudices, my seeing him or advising him is in vain. This morning you said a man had cured him by writing upon a tin plate, and, to try if he was well, they have since crammed him with raw beef. I do not think the letters that he swallowed will do him any harm, neither will they do him any good; but I shall not be surprised if the raw beef kills him, and the sick daughter too, before I see them to-morrow."