good-nights and retired to their
respective rooms to seek the refreshment of sleep in preparation for the
morrow's early start.

But though Sir Richard, his mind relieved by his meeting with Anstice,
fell into a sound slumber ten minutes after he laid his head down on his
pillow, Anstice lay awake all night between the white walls of his
mosquito curtains.

For there was that in his thoughts which effectually banished sleep.

CHAPTER II

Anstice never forgot that first day's ride over the desert sand. They
had started early, very shortly, indeed, after daybreak, and by the time
the sun was fully risen they were already some miles on their way.

It was a heavenly morning, the dry and glittering air full of that
peculiar, crisp sparkle which mounts to one's head like champagne. The
sand shone and twinkled in the yellow sunshine with an almost dazzling
effect, and the pale blue sky had not yet taken on the pitiless
ultramarine hue which comes with the brazen noon.

The horses, too, seemed alive to the exhilarating quality of the air.
They curvetted and danced over the sand, tossing their arched necks and
lifting their feet daintily as though they were conscious of the beauty
and fitness of their own motion.

"By Jove, Sir Richard, life is worth living on a morning like this!"
Anstice threw back his head and inhaled large draughts of the
intoxicating, sun-warmed air. "Why on earth do we herd in cities when
there are glorious tracts of desert land where one might pitch one's
tent! I declare I wish I were a nomad myself!"

"You feel like that?" Sir Richard looked a trifle wistfully at the
younger man, envying him his superior youth and more robust physique.
"For my part I confess to a distrust of the desert. It seems to me as
though there were a blight on these huge tracts of sand, as though the
Creator had regretted their creation, yet was too perfect a Worker to
try, by altering the original purpose of His handiwork, to turn them
into something for which they were not intended."

He paused, pulling up his horse and turning in his saddle to survey the
yellow and brown waste over which they had come.

"I suppose, as an Englishman whose forbears have always clung to the
soil, I find more pleasure in beholding an English landscape," he said,
with a smile which was half apologetic. "The ideal of making two blades
of grass spring where there was but one before may not be a very exalted
one, but I confess I see