ction to so interested a
listener, Kirby launched forth into an elaboration of his theme; trying
to expound something of the capital-and-labour situation to his
follower; and secretly wondering at the keen zest wherewith his words
were listened to.

Seldom was Kirby so successful in making Najib follow so long an
oration. And he was pleased with his own new-found powers of explaining
Occidental customs to an Oriental mind.

Now, Logan Kirby knew the tangled Syrian character and its myriad queer
slants, as well as it can be given to a white man to know it. Kirby's
father had been a missionary, at Nablous. He himself had been born
there, and had spent his boyhood at the mission. That was why--after he
had completed his engineering course at Columbia's school of mines and
had served an apprenticeship in Colorado and Arizona--the Cabell
Smelting Company of New York had sent him out to the Land of Moab, as
manager of its new-acquired little antimony mine.

The mine--a mere prospect shaft--was worked by about thirty
fellaheen--native labourers--supervised by a native guard of twelve
Turkish soldiers. Small as was the plant, it was a rich property and it
was piling up dividends for the Cabells. Antimony, in the East, is used
in a score of ways--from its employment in the form of kohl, for the
darkening of women's eyes, to the chemical by-products, always in demand
by Syrian apothecaries.

This was the only antimony mine between Aden and Germany. Its shipments
were in constant demand. Its revenues were a big item on the credit side
of the Cabell ledger.

Kirby's personal factotum, as well as superintendent of the mine, was
this squat little Syrian, Najib, who had once spent two blissfully
useless years with an All Nations Show, at Coney Island; and who there
had picked up a language which he proudly believed to be English; and
which he spoke exclusively when talking with the manager.

Kirby's rare knowledge of the East had enabled the mine to escape ruin a
score of times where a manager less conversant with Oriental ways must
have blundered into some fatal error in the handling of his men or in
dealing with the local authorities.

Remember, please, that in the East it is the seemingly insignificant
things which bring disaster to the feringhee, or foreigner. For example,
many an American or European has met unavenged death because he did not
realize that he was heaping vile affront upon his Bedouin host by eating
with h