yer is at nightfall, when it
is quite dark; their third is at daybreak.

Michael knew that the moment _el isfirar_, or the first yellow glow,
appeared in the heavens, the white figures would turn to the east and
perform their _subh_, or daybreak devotion. He knew that it would be
finished before the golden globe appeared above the rim of the desert,
for did not the Prophet counsel his people not to pray exactly at
sunrise or sunset or at noon, because they might be confounded with the
infidels who worshipped the sun? Yet it gave him a fresh thrill each
morning to watch these desert worshippers prostrate themselves in
undoubting faith before their omnipotent God. In the untrodden desert,
with its mingling of sky and sand, their perfect trust and faith in
Allah seemed a convincing and evident belief. At such times he forgot
that these same men were the children of Superstition and that one and
all of them were held in the bondage of _genii_. He also forgot that
their performance of five prayers a day, which is the number prescribed
for the devout, did not necessarily make them men of honour. A perfect
trust in Allah gives a bad man a long rope.

As the figures drew nearer and the golden globe rested for one moment
on the sands of the desert, for that one brief moment before its rays
broke into the amazing splendour which is Egypt's, the world became
less mysterious, more familiar. Things relating to the day's work
forced themselves upon Michael's mind. His bath and breakfast and many
other practical things began to usurp his thoughts, while the barking
of dogs, the movement in the hut of the "boys," brought him back to the
common, everyday life of the excavating camp.

While he was dressing he remembered that Freddy Lampton's sister was to
arrive that day. For a moment or two his mind was completely usurped
with a vision of what the girl would be like. Subconsciously his
manhood quickened.

Yet the very idea of a woman intruding herself upon their strange and
exquisitely-intellectual life--a life made healthy by the long hours of
physical labour in the various portions of the excavation--slightly
annoyed him.

Fleeting pictures of Lampton as a girl rose and faded before his eyes
as he hurriedly shaved himself, slipped into his flannels and adjusted
his necktie as punctiliously as though he were going to a tennis-party
at Mena House Hotel. It is typical of Englishmen in the East that the
young men in the e