“Some of you pedar sags have stolen my money; who is it? where’s the khan?” I inquire, addressing the guilty-looking mud-bake.  He is now shivering visibly with fright, but makes a ludicrous effort to put a bold face on the matter, and brazenly asks, “Chand pool” (How much is missing?).  “Khylie! where is the khan and the inirza?  I will take you all to Aminulah Khan and have you bastinadoed!” The poor mudbake turns pale at the bare suggestion of the bastinado, and stoutly maintains his own innocence.  He would no doubt as stoutly proclaim the guilt of his comrades if by so doing he could escape punishment himself.  Nor is this so surprising, when one reflects that either of these worthies would, without a moment’s hesitation, perform the same office for him or for each other.

Without wasting time in bandying arguments with the mudbake, I sally forth in search of the others, and meet them just outside the gate; they are returning from hiding the money in the ruins.  The crimson flood of guilt overspreads their faces as I raise my finger and shake it at them by way of admonition.  With them following behind with all the meekness of discovered guilt, I lead the way back up into the bala-khana.  Arriving there, both of them wilt so utterly and completely, and proceed to plead for mercy with such ludicrous promptness, that my sense of the ridiculous outweighs all other considerations, and I regard their demonstrations of remorse with a broad smile of amusement.  It is anything but a laughing matter from their own standpoint, however; the mudbake warns them forthwith that I have threatened to have them bastinadoed, and they fairly writhe and groan in an agony of apprehension.  The khan, owing to his more sanguine temperament, and a lively conception that the heaviest burden of guilt and accompanying punishment would naturally fall on his own shoulders as the chief of my escort, removes his turban and then lies down on the floor and grovels at my feet.

All the hair he possesses is a little tuft or two left on his otherwise smoothly shaven pate, by which he confidently expects at his demise to be tenderly lifted up into Paradise by the Prophet Mohammed.  After kissing most of the dust off my geivehs, and banging his head violently against the floor, he signifies his willingness to relinquish all anticipations of eternal happiness, black-eyed houris and the like, by attempting to yank out even this Celestial hand-hold, hoping that the woeful depth of his anguish and the sincerity of his repentance may prove the means of escaping present punishment.  His eyes roll wildly about in their sockets, and in a voice choking with emotion he begs me pathetically to keep the matter a secret from the Khan of Ghalakua.  “O Sahib, Sahib!  Hoikim no, hoikim no!” he pleads, and the anguish-stricken khan accompanies these pleadings with a look of unutterable agony, and furthermore indulges in the pantomime of sawing off his ears and his hands with his forefinger.  This latter tragic demonstration is to let me know that the result of exposure would be to have the former, and perhaps the latter, of these useful members cut off, after the cruel and summary justice of this country.  The mirza and mudbake cluster around and supplement their superior’s pathetic pleadings with deep-drawn groans of “Allah, Allah!” and sundry prostrations toward Mecca.