ods of the
ancient people, beheld them eye to eye clear and close in the
twilight, and the office of postman fell vacant in
Otford-under-the-Wold.

THE PRAYER OF BOOB AHEERA

In the harbour, between the liner and the palms, as the huge ship's
passengers came up from dinner, at moonrise, each in his canoe, Ali
Kareeb Ahash and Boob Aheera passed within knife thrust.

So urgent was the purpose of Ali Kareeb Ahash that he did not lean
over as his enemy slid by, did not tarry then to settle that long
account; but that Boob Aheera made no attempt to reach him was a
source of wonder to Ali. He pondered it till the liner's electric
lights shone far away behind him with one blaze and the canoe was near
to his destination, and pondered it in vain, for all that the eastern
subtlety of his mind was able to tell him clearly was that it was not
like Boob Aheera to pass him like that.

That Boob Aheera could have dared to lay such a cause as his before
the Diamond Idol Ali had not conceived, yet as he drew near to the
golden shrine in the palms, that none that come by the great ships
ever found, he began to see more clearly in his mind that this was
where Boob had gone on that hot night. And when he beached his canoe
his fears departed, giving place to the resignation with which he
always viewed Destiny; for there on the white sea sand were the tracks
of another canoe, the edges all fresh and ragged. Boob Aheera had
been before him. Ali did not blame himself for being late, the thing
had been planned before the beginning of time, by gods that knew their
business; only his hate of Boob Aheera increased, his enemy against
whom he had come to pray. And the more his hate increased the more
clearly he saw him, until nothing else could be seen by the eye of his
mind but the dark lean figure, the little lean legs, the grey beard
and neat loin-cloth of Boob Aheera, his enemy.

That the Diamond Idol should have granted the prayers of such a one he
did not as yet imagine, he hated him merely for his presumptuousness
in approaching the shrine at all, for approaching it before him whose
cause was righteous, for many an old past wrong, but most of all for
the expression of his face and the general look of the man as he has
swept by in his canoe with his double paddle going in the moonlight.

Ali pushed through the steaming vegetation. The place smelt of
orchids. There is no track to the shrine though many go. If there
were a