the storm. It was about two o'clock in the morning when, to the intense relief of all, we actually arrived at our destination.
We disembark for "positively the last" time at Afioun-Karahissar, where the deluge adds its gloom to the now familiar woefulness of a town in ruins. Yet many of the inhabitants are actually sleeping in the mud of that awful night.
We are driven some way beyond the town, to the one primitive and tumble-down roof that can possibly offer us shelter. Like most Eastern hans (i.e., inns), it is built round a courtyard, the living-rooms next to the stable; but horses are warm and agreeable neighbours. Once at the front, on a particularly cold and bitter day, the French, who shrugged their shoulders and refused none of my mad requests, politely allowed me to travel with the horses!
We climb rickety stairs and cross a wooden veranda to examine the rooms—one with three beds, the other with two. Alas, the former is too much for even the cheik's philosophy, and he decides for the courtyard. Neither of the beds in the double room is clean, certainly, but a marked advance on the alternative; and, after placing the cheik's quilt and prayer-mat between myself and the "men in possession," and wrapping myself up in two thick rugs, I am glad enough to "go to bed in my boots," with at least the prospect of "keeping still" for a few hours. If a fire has brought out more "visitors" than were obvious at our first inspection, it is still better than traffic "by goods."
The officer is compelled literally to "sit up" all night, as there is no room for him to stretch his limbs.
On such a night I could have wished for a "smaller" hole in the floor, and that the "mud" walls had not been quite so badly in need of repair; yet the shabby and threadbare costume of the "man with our morning tea," was not sordid, but only picturesque.
The cheik, like so many men, is an excellent housewife, and when he laid a clean handkerchief upon a
