Although the Amir punished many small offences with death, he was not always enraged when one man killed another, unless the murdered person happened to be one whom he knew and liked, then his anger was ungovernable, and the murderer was generally ordered death in some particularly horrible manner. One of the slave boys, of whom the Amir was very fond, and had raised to a position of influence and power, and who consequently became arrogant and overbearing in manner to others, and so gained for himself a good many enemies, was shot by a soldier one evening while riding across the square in Sherpur cantonment. When the soldier was brought before the Amir, the latter, suspecting that he could have had no enmity against the slave boy, questioned him as to who instigated him to commit this deed, and the soldier refused to answer. This further enraged the Amir, and he gave orders that the man was to be tied to the bough of a tree by his hair in the palace garden, and so many square inches of skin taken off his body daily until he confessed. The man died on the third day without confessing anything to incriminate another, but the name of one of the generals was mentioned freely by the people as the instigator of the crime, in revenge for the slave boy insulting him in the Amir’s presence shortly before. Another case showing the severity of the Amir towards the relatives of those who escaped his vengeance was that of an old man brought before him, whose son had run away from the country. The old man’s son, with two or three others, had been concerned in, or accused of, swindling the treasury, and knowing what was being said against them, and the fate in store should they be convicted, they determined on escaping to India. The Kotwal, however, got wind of their intention, and came on the night proposed for escape with some twenty of his men, and posted them outside the gate, where some horses belonging to those in the house were standing ready saddled. The son, and those with him, discovering that the Kotwal and his men were lying in wait for them, determined on cutting through them, so, suddenly opening the door, they rushed out armed with swords and revolvers. The Kotwal was not noted for personal courage, and the Kotwali sepoys generally are seldom courageous, perhaps through being of mixed races, and they gave way after one or two of their men had been cut down, and then the young fellows made a dash to the horses, and cutting down those who held them, mounted and got away, and were not heard of again. The father, who was left in the house, was seized by the Kotwal and taken to the Amir, where, not knowing whether his son had escaped or not, he begged the Amir to forgive him, urging that he was guiltless of the crime of which others had accused him, and offered his own life if his son’s might be spared, saying the Amir might kill him himself where he stood. The Amir, enraged at the young men escaping his vengeance,