behind our backs, quarrelled daily among themselves over their modokal
(legitimate pickings and stealings--ten per cent, on everything
passing through their hands), and meekly bore with any abuse bestowed
gratuitously upon them, for an aggregate of one hundred and thirty kerans
a month--and, of course, their modokal. Some enterprising members of
the colony had formed themselves into a club, and imported a
billiard-table from England; this, also, was installed in Mr. North's
house, and it furnished the means for many an hour of pleasant diversion.
Like all Persian houses, the house was built around a square court-yard.
Mr. North had also a pair of small white bull-dogs, named, respectively,
"Crib" and "Swindle." The last-named animal furnished us with quite an
exciting episode one February evening. He had been acting rather
strangely for two or three days; we thought that one of the servants had
been giving him a dose of bhang in revenge for having worried his kitten,
and that he would soon recover; but on this particular day, when out for
a run with his owner, his strange behavior took the form of leaping
impulsively at Mr. North, and, with seemingly wild frolic, seizing and
shaking his garments. When Mr. North returned home he took the
precautionary measure of chaining him up in the yard. Shortly afterward,
I came in from my customary evening walk, and, all unconscious of the
change in his behavior, went up to him; with a half-playful, half-savage
spring he seized the leg of my trousers, and, with an evidently
uncontrollable impulse, shook a piece clean out of it. He became
gradually worse as the evening wore away; the wild expression of his eyes
developed in an alarming manner; he would try to get at any person who
showed himself, and he made night hideous with the fearful barking howl
of a mad dog. Poor Swindle had gone mad; and I had had a narrow escape
from being bitten. We lassoed him from opposite directions and dragged
him outside and shot him. Swindle was a plucky little dog, and so was
Crib; one day they chased a vagrant cat up on to the roof; driven to