ere
intended, in just this manner would it speak.

"Men of Feringistan?" asked the aged Sheik. "And what do ye here?"

"We be fighting-men, all," replied the Master. He had already noted,
with a thrill of admiration, the wondrous purity of the old man's
Arabic. His use of final vowels after the noun, and his rejection of
the pronoun, which apocope in the Arabic verb renders necessary in
the everyday speech of the people, told the Master he was listening
to some archaic, uncorrupted form of the language. Here indeed was
nobility of blood, breed, speech, if anywhere!

"Fighting-men, all," the Master repeated, while Leclair listened
with keen enjoyment and the Legion stood attentive, with the
white-burnoused horsemen giving ear to every word--astonished, no
doubt, to hear Arabic speech from the lips of an unbeliever. "We have
traveled far, from the Lands of the Books. Is it not meritorious, O
Sheik? Doth not thy Prophet himself say: 'Voyaging is victory, and he
who journeyeth not is both ignorant and blind?"'

The old man pondered a moment, then fell to stroking his beard. The
act was friendly, and of good portent. He murmured:

"I see, O Frank, that thou hast read the Strong Book. Thou dost know
our law, even though thou be from Feringistan. What is thy name?"

"Men know me only as The Master. And thine?"

"_Bara Miyan_ (The Great Sir), nothing more."

"Dost thou wish us well?" the Master put a leading question.

"_Kull'am antum bil khair_!" (May ye be well, every year!) said the
old Sheik. The Master sensed a huge relief. Undoubtedly--hard as this
was to understand, and much as it contradicted Rrisa's prediction--the
attitude of these Jannati Shahr folk was friendly. Unless, indeed,
all this meant ambush. But to look into those grave, deep eyes, to
see that furrowed countenance of noble, straight-forward uprightness,
seemed to negative any such suspicion.

"We have come to bring ye wondrous gifts," the Master volunteered,
wanting to strike while the iron was hot.

"That is well," assented Bara Miyan. "But never before have the Franks
come to this center of the Empty Abodes."

"Even Allah had to say 'Be!' before anything was!" (_i.e._, there must
be a first time for everything).

This answer, pat from a favorite verse of the Koran, greatly pleased
Bara Miyan. He smiled gravely, and nodded.

"Allah made all men," he affirmed. "Mayhap the Franks and we be
brothers. Have ye come by way of Mecca?"

"Yea. An