During the interview he squats down on the threshold of the little bungalow, and concentrates his curiosity and suspicion into a protracted penetrating stare, focused steadily at my devoted countenance.  Mohammed Ahzim Khan imitates him to perfection, except that his stare contains more curiosity and less suspicion.

Mirza Gholam Ahmed proceeds upon his mission of fathoming the secret of my nationality with extreme wariness, as becomes an Oriental official engaged in a task of significant import, and at first confines himself to the use of Persian and Hindostani.  It does not take me long, however, to satisfy the trustworthy old Peshawari that I am not a Muscov, and fifteen minutes after his preliminary pinch of snuff, he is unbosoming himself to me to the extent of letting me know that he served with General Pollock on the Seistan Boundary Commission, that he went with General Pollock to London, and moreover rejoices in the titular distinction of C. I. E.  (Companion Indian Empire), bestowed upon him for long and faithful civil and political services.  The C. I. E. he designates, with a pardonable smile of self-approval, as “backsheesh” given him, without solicitation, by the government of India; a circumstance that probably appeals to his Oriental conception as a most extraordinary feature in his favor.  Bribery, favoritism, and personal influence enter so largely into the preferments and rewards of Oriental governments, that anything obtained on purely meritorious grounds may well be valued highly.

He understands English sufficiently well to comprehend the meaning of my remarks and queries, and even knows a few words himself.  From him I learn that I will not be permitted to visit Herat, and that I am to be kept under guard until Faramorz Khan’s courier returns from the Boundary Commission Camp with Colonel Ridgeway’s answer.  He tells me that the fame of the bicycle has long ago been brought to Herat by pilgrims returning from Meshed, and the marvellous stories of my accomplishments are current in the bazaars.  Fourteen farsakhs (fifty-six miles) an hour, and nothing said about the condition of the roads, is the average Herati’s understanding of it; and many a grave, turbaned merchant in the bazaar, and wild warrior on the ramparts, indulges in day-dreams of an iron horse little less miraculous in its deeds than the winged steed of the air we read of in the Arabian Nights.

The direct results of Mirza Gholam Ahmed’s visit and favorable report to the Governor of Herat, are made manifest on the following day by the appearance of his companion of yesterday in charge of two attendants, bringing me boxes of sweetmeats, almonds, raisins, and salted nuts, together with a package of tea and a fifteen-pound cone of loaf-sugar; all backsheesh from the Governor of Herat.  Mirza Gholam Ahmed himself contributes a cake of toilet soap, a few envelopes and sheets of paper, and Huntley & Palmer’s Beading biscuits.  Upon stumbling upon these latter acceptable articles, one naturally falls to wondering whether this world-famed firm of biscuit-makers suspect that their wares sometimes penetrate even inside the battlemented walls of Herat.  With them come also three gunsmiths, charged with the duty of assisting in the reparation of the bicycle, badly damaged by the horse, it is remembered, on the way from Furrah.