We had up till now been singularly fortunate as regards accidents, or rather evil results from them.  To-day, however, luck deserted us, for a few miles out of Deybid my right leg became so swollen that I could scarcely sit on my horse.  The pain was acute, the sensation that of having been bitten by some poisonous insect.  Gerome, ever the Job’s comforter, suggested a centipede, adding, “If so, you will probably have to lie up for four or five days.”  The look-out was not cheerful, certainly, for at Mourghab, the first stage, I had to be lifted off my horse and carried into the post-house.

With some difficulty my boot was cut off, and revealed the whole leg, below the knee, discoloured and swollen to double its size, but no sign of a wound or bite.  “Blood-poisoning,” says Gerome, decidedly.  “I have seen hundreds of cases in Central Asia.  It generally proves fatal there,” he adds consolingly; “but the Russian soldier is so badly fed.”  The little man seems rather disappointed at my diagnosis of my case—­the effect due to a new and tight boot which I had not been able to change since leaving Ispahan.  Notwithstanding, I cannot put foot to ground without excruciating pain.  Spreading the rugs out on the dirty earthen floor, I make up my mind to twenty-four hours here at least.  It is, perhaps, the dirtiest post-house we have seen since leaving Teheran; but moving under the present circumstances is out of the question.

The long summer day wears slowly away.  Gerome, like a true Russian, hunts up a samovar in the village, and consoles himself with innumerable glasses of tea and cigarettes, while the medicine-chest is brought into requisition, and I bathe the swollen limb unceasingly for three or four hours with Goulard’s extract and water, surrounded by a ring of admiring and very dirty natives.  But my efforts are in vain, for the following morning the pain is as severe, the leg as swollen as ever.  Gerome is all for applying a blister, which he says will “bring the poison out”!  Another miserable day breaks, and finds me still helpless.  I do not think I ever realized before how slowly time can pass, for I had not a single book, with the exception of “Propos d’Exil,” by Pierre Loti, and even that delightful work is apt to pall after three complete perusals in the space of as many weeks.  From sunrise to sunset I lay, prone on my back, staring up at the cobwebby, smoke-blackened rafters, while the shadows shortened and lengthened in the bright sunlit yard, the monotonous silence broken only by the deep regular snores of my companion, whose capacity for sleep was something marvellous, the clucking of poultry, and the occasional stamp or snort of a horse in the stable below.  Now and again a rat would crawl out, and, emboldened by the stillness, creep close up to me, darting back into its hole with a jump and a squeal as I waved it off with hand or foot.  My visitors from the village did not return to-day, which was something to be thankful for, although towards