Finally, all the guests having arrived, I ride several times around the brick-walks, the strange audience of turbaned priests and veiled women showing their great approval in murmuring undertones of “kylie khoob” and involuntary acclamations of “Mashallah! mash-all-ah!” as they witness with bated breath the strange and incomprehensible scene of a Ferenghi riding a vehicle, that will not stand alone.

Altogether, the great tomasha at Mardan Khan’s is a decided success.  Scarcely can this be said, however, of the “little tomasha” given to the members of Abbas Khan’s own family on the way home.  Abbas Khan’s compound is very small, and the brick-walks very rough and broken; therefore, it is hardly surprising to me, though probably somewhat surprising to him, when, in turning a corner I execute an undignified header into a bunch of busbies.

The third day after my arrival in Meshed, I received a telegram from the British Charge d’Affaires at Teheran saying:  “You must not attempt to cross the frontier of Afghanistan at any point.”  Two days later the expected courier arrives from the Boundary Commission Camp with a letter saying:  “It is useless for you to raise the question of coming to the Commission Camp.  In the first place, the Afghans would never allow you to come here; and if you should happen to reach here, you would never be able to get away again.”

These two very encouraging missives from our own people seem at first thought more heartless than even the “permission refused” of the Russians.  It occurs to me that this “you must not attempt to cross the Afghan frontier” might just as easily have been told me at the Legation at Teheran as when I had travelled six hundred miles to get to it; but the ways of diplomacy are past the comprehension of ordinary mortals.

What, after all, are the ambitions and enterprises of an individual, compared to the will and policy of an empire?  No matter whether the empire be semi-civilized and despotic, or free and enlightened, the obscure and struggling individual is usually rated 0000.

Russia—­“permission refused.”  England—­paternally—­“must not attempt;” cold, offish language this for a lone cycler to be confronted with away up here in the northeast corner of Persia, from representatives of the two greatest empires of the world.  What is to be done?

Mr. Gray, returning from the telegraph office later in the evening, finds me endeavoring to unravel the Gordian knot of the situation through the medium of a brown-study.  My geographical ruminations have already resulted in a conviction that there is no possible way to unravel it and reach India with a bicycle; my only chance of doing so is to cut it and abide by the consequences.

“I have just been communicating with Teheran,” says Mr. Gray.  “Everybody wants to know what you propose doing.”

“Tell them I am going down to Beerjand to consult with Heshmet-i-Molk, the Ameer of Seistan, and see if it is possible to get through to Quetta via Beerjand.”