JOURNEY FROM HEKAT TO ORENBURG. 215 



duty to the city ; but Khoda Woordee's absence 

 could only be imagined by supposing he was think- 

 ing of something which everybody else had forgotten. 

 The march was to Purwana, about six and a half 

 miles through the range of hills north of Herat a 

 capital road, fine moonlight, and only one false alarm 

 on the route. Just as I had taken off my boots and 

 called for a pipe, Khoda Woordee galloped into the 

 court, saying that when close to the halting-place he 

 had been chased ; that a poor wretch, who was on 

 foot in his company, had been seized, he feared, by 

 the seven horsemen from whom he had thought it 

 judicious to flee. He begged that I would allow him 

 to take some of the Kipchak troopers and go to the 

 rescue of his companion. I consented, and had some 

 idea of going myself ; but I am glad I did not, for 

 while Brutus Avas groaning and praying for his son 

 Mahomed Daood, who, he feared, must have fallen 

 into the hands of Khoda Woordee's pursuers, in 

 came young Daood in convulsions of laughter, saying 

 that seeing some one riding ahead of him, and wish- 

 ing to have a chat, he put his horse to a canter, and 

 that the person ahead of him increasing his pace, he 

 (Mahomed Daood) called lustily to him, in the name 

 of the Prophet, to pull in his horse, but the louder 

 he cried the quicker fled the leading horseman, who, 

 I need hardly say, was Khoda Woordee, who for 

 once thought too much, inasmuch as he mistook a 

 young stripling for " seven Turkomans 011 a chupas" 



