hardly have been persuaded to undertake
another day's march; his horse--well, the vultures might have been
tearing him if he had persevered, so instead of going off in one of
his squibby little rages, which would have made him ridiculous, Owen
suddenly grew sad and invited the hunter to drink with him, and it
was arranged that as soon as the wind dropped the quest for Tahar
should be pursued.

He would be found in an oasis not more than two days' journey from
Laghouat, so the hunter said, but the dragoman's opinion was that
the old hunter was not very sure; Tahar would be found there, and if
he were not there he was for certain in another oasis three or four
days still farther south.

"But I cannot travel all over the Sahara in search of eagles."

"If _Sidna_ would like to return to Tunis?"

But to return to Tunis would mean returning to England, and Owen felt
that his business in the desert was not yet completed; as well
travel from one oasis to another in quest of eagles as anything
else, and three days afterwards he rode at the head of his caravan,
anxious to reach Ain Mahdy, trying to believe he had grown
interested in the Arab, and would like to see him living under the
rule of his own chief, even though the chief was, to a certain
extent, responsible to the French Government; still, to all intents
and purposes he would be a free Arab. Yes, and Owen thought he would
like to see a Kaid; and wondering what his reception would be like,
he rode through the desert thinking of the Kaid, his eyes fixed on
the great horizons which had re-appeared, having been lost for many
days in mist and rain.

An exquisite silence vibrated through the great spaces, music for
harps rather than for violins, and Owen rode on, reaching the oasis,
as he had been told he would, at the end of the second day's
journey. When he arrived the Kaid was engaged in administering
justice, and Owen was forced _de faire un peu l'anti-chambre_; but
this was not disagreeable to him. The Arab court-house seemed to him
an excellent place for a lesson in the language; and the case the
Kaid was deciding was to his taste. A man was suing for divorce, and
for reasons which would have astonished Englishmen, and cause the
plaintiff to be hurled out of civilised society; but in the Sahara
the case did not strike anybody as unnatural; and Owen listened to
the woman telling her misfortunes under a veil. But though deeply
interested he was forced to leave the b