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190 190 ENGLAND AND RUSSIA IN CENTRAL ASIA. with which he could face death. Long years afterwards a mysterious stranger left at the door of a house in London a prayer-book which had belonged to Arthur Conolly, in which he had entered a touching record of his sufferings and aspirations in the well at Bokhara, and then vanished. The house belonged to Conolly' s sister, but of the stranger no trace could be found.* It is thirty-seven years ago since this tragedy was enacted in Bokhara. For more than a generation English vengeance has slumbered. But it cannot be because the bloodthirsty act of Nasrullah has been forgotten or condoned. Time works many changes, and smooths down the bitterest of wrongs. But the inhuman treatment of those English officers, who went to Bokhara not through any weak desire to gain notoriety, but through a sense of duty, in fulfilment of a great national design, can never be forgotten. It is the one instance in history of the representatives of England having failed to find a vindicator in their country, the solitary occasion when the remembrance of a crime has been sought to be mollified. Yet the story lives in history, and will ever live. The stoicism of Conolly, the intrepidity of Stoddart, are not the least striking proofs our countrymen have afforded before the world of Asia of the possession of great imperial characteristics. It is upon such conduct as theirs that the fabric of British superiority rests in • See Colonel Malleson's " Eecreations of an Indian Official/ page 293.