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In addition to horses for himself and servants, the traveller is required to pay for one to carry the shagird-chapar who accompanies them to the next station to bring back the horses. The ordinary charge is one keran a farsakh for each horse.
We conclude that the Shah's step-father and the little group of holy men clubbed together and paid the Persian guard about a keran to let them in, and perhaps another half-keran to the Armenian farrash for not summarily turning them out.
Mark liked Aunt Keran and accepted her hospitality as a tribute to himself rather than to his position as the grandson of the Vicar. Miss Dale had been a schoolmistress before she came to keep house for her brother, and she worked hard to supplement what learning Cass could get from the village school before, some three years after Mark came to Nancepean, he was sent to Rosemarket Grammar School.
The woman readily accepts the offer of an additional half keran for relieving me of the onerous task of cooking my own supper, and takes her departure, promising to cook it as quickly as possible. Happy in the contemplation of a whole chicken for supper, I sit around and chat and drink tea with my disinterested friend for the space of an hour.
In response to my inquiries, he points up toward the pass and offers to accompany me thither for the small sum of "yek keran;" giving me to understand that without his presence it is highly indiscreet to proceed.
Deh Namek is too small and unimportant a place to support a public tchai-khan; but along the Meshed pilgrim road the villagers are keenly alive to the chance of earning a stray keran, and the advent of one of those inexhaustible keran-mines, a "Sahib," is the signal for some enterprising person, sufficiently well-to-do to own a samovar, to get up steam in it and prepare tea.
The poor Shagird, whom we had to threaten with a severe chastisement if he did not accompany us, was in a terrible state. The bow-string was the least he could expect when the khan came to know of the trick we had played him. An extra kerán at Sin-Sin, however, soon consoled our guide. He probably never returned to Pasingán at all, but sought his fortunes elsewhere.
"Neis; loke-me-morge-neis." "Sheerah ass?" "Sheerah neis." "What have you then besides bread?" For answer the woman points to a few beruffled chickens scratching for grains of barley among a heap of rubbish that has evidently been exploited by them times without number before, and says she can sell us chickens at one keran apiece.
The promise of an extra kerán or two if we reached the end of the stage by daylight had a wonderful effect on the Shagird. Though it was terribly heavy going, and the snow in places up to our girths, we covered the five miles lying between Patchinar and the foot of the Kharzán in a little over three hours good going considering the state of the road.
The caravanserai-Jee assigns me the furnished chamber above referred to; the room is found to be well carpeted, contains a mattress and an abundance of flaming red quilts, and on a small table reposes a well-thumbed copy of the Koran with gilt lettering and illumined pages; for these really comfortable quarters I am charged the trifling sum of one keran.
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