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 evening I should have hailed even them with delight--dirt, vermin, and all.

Patience was rewarded, for next day I was able to stand, and towards evening set out for Kawamabad, twenty-four miles distant.

Though still painful and almost black, all inflammation had subsided, and three days later I was able to get on a boot "You'd have been well in half the time," insisted Gerome, "if you had only let me apply a blister." The road from Mourghab to Kawamabad is wild and picturesque, leading through a narrow gorge, on either side of which are precipitous cliffs of rock and forest, three or four hundred feet high.