ter of Ben Oliel? Thank God! But why? Has she recanted?"

"She has fallen sick."

"And Ben Aboo has sent her to prison?"

"He thinks that the physician who will cure her quickest."

"Allah save us! The dog of dogs! But God be praised! At least she is
saved from the Sultan."

"For the present, only for the-present."

"For ever, brother, for ever! Listen! your ear. A word of news for your
news: the Mahdi is coming! The boy has been for him."

"Bismillah! Ben Oliel's boy?"

"Ali. He is back in Tetuan. And listen again! Behind the Mahdi comes
the--"

"Ya Allah! well?"

"Hark! A footstep on the street--some one is near--"

"But quick. Behind the Mahdi--what?"

"God will show! In peace, brother, in peace!"

"In peace!"

CHAPTER XXV

THE COMING OF THE MAHDI

The Mahdi came back in the evening. He had no standard-bearers going
before him, no outrunners, no spearmen, no fly-flappers, no ministers of
state; he rode no white stallion in gorgeous trappings, and was himself
bedecked in no snowy garments. His ragged following he had left behind
him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham of rough grey cloth was all
his bodily adornment; yet he was mightier than the monarch who had
entered Tetuan that day.

He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint; not like
a conquering prince, but like an avenging angel. Outside the town he had
come upon the great body of the Sultan's army lying encamped under
the walls. The townspeople who had shut the soldiers out, with all the
rabble of their following, had nevertheless sent them fifty camels' load
of kesksoo, and it had been served in equal parts, half a pound to each
man. Where this meal had already been eaten, the usual charlatans of
the market-place had been busily plying their accustomed trades.
Black jugglers from Zoos, sham snake-charmers from the desert, and
story-tellers both grave and facetious, all twanging their hideous
ginbri, had been seated on the ground in half-circles of soldiers and
their women. But the Mahdi had broken up and scattered every group of
them.

"Away!" he had cried. "Away with your uncleanness and deception."

And the foulest babbler of them all, hot with the exercise of the
indecent gestures wherewith he illustrated his filthy tale, had slunk
off like a pariah dog.

As the Mahdi entered the town a number of mountaineers in the Feddan
were going through their feats of wonder-play before a multitude of
excited s