“He then took his leave with a semblance of affectionate cordiality that made the bystanders stare; thus supporting to the last the profound dissimulation which he had only once belied for a moment. The letter was duly handed over to us the same afternoon by his head steward, whom he had left to look after the house and garden in his absence. Doubtless my readers will be curious to know what sort of recommendation ’Obeyd had provided us with. It was written on a small scrap of thick paper, about four inches each way, carefully folded up and secured by three seals. However, ‘our fears forgetting manners,’ we thought best with Hamlet to make perusal of this grand commission before delivering it to its destination. So we undid the seals with precautions admitting of reclosing them in proper form, and read the royal knavery. I give it word for word; it ran thus: ‘In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate, we, ’Obeyd-ebn-Rasheed, salute you, O ’Abdallah, son of Feysul-ebn-Sa’ood, and peace be on you, and the mercy of God and His blessings.’ (This is the invariable commencement of all Wahabee epistles, to the entire omission of the complimentary formulas used by other Orientals.) ‘After which,’ so proceeded the document, ‘we inform you that the bearers of this are one Seleem-el-’Eys, and his comrade, Barakat-esh-Shamee, who give themselves out for having some knowledge in’—here followed a word of equivocal import, capable of interpretation alike by ‘medicine’ or ‘magic,’ but generally used in Nedjed for the latter, which is at Ri’ad a capital crime. ‘Now may God forbid that we should hear of any evil having befallen you. We salute also your father, Feysul, and your brothers, and all your family, and anxiously await your news in answer. Peace be with you.’ Here followed the signet impression. “A pretty recommendation, especially under the actual circumstances! However, not content with this, ’Obeyd found means to transmit further information regarding us, and all in the same tenor, to Ri’ad, as we afterward discovered. For his letter, I need hardly say that it never passed from our possession, where it yet remains as an interesting autograph, to that of ’Abdallah; with whom it would inevitably have proved the one only thing wanting, as we shall subsequently see, to make us leave the forfeit of our lives in the Nedjean man-trap. “Before evening three men knocked at our door; they were our future guides. The eldest bore the name of Mubarek, and was a native of the suburbs of Bereydah; all three were of the genuine Kaseem breed, darker and lower in stature than the inhabitants of Ha’yel, but not ill-looking, and extremely affable in their demeanor.