The long pauses and the Persian circumlocutions had occupied a good deal of time.
"You do not seem to have needed my counsel or assistance much," I said.
"With such an armoury of weapons you could manage half-a-dozen maharajahs." "Yes--perhaps so.

But I have strong reasons for wishing this affair quickly over, and the editor of a daily paper is a thing of terror to a native prince; you must have seen that." "What do you mean to do with your man when he is safely in your hands, if it is not an indiscreet question ?" "Do with him ?" asked Isaacs with some astonishment.

"Is it possible you have not guessed?
He is a brave man, and a true believer.

I will give him money and letters, that he may make his way to Baghdad, or wherever he will be safe.

He shall depart in peace, and be as free as air." I had half suspected my friend of some such generous intention, but he had played his part of unrelenting hardness so well in our late interview with the Hindoo prince that it seemed incomprehensible that a man should be so pitiless and so kind on the same day.