ner every evening
he rendered his account, stalking into the sitting-room when we called,
pulling up a chair, and sitting down at the table opposite R. From his
leather bag, change was produced, and if the change was wrong, there was
agony; but that only happened once or twice. A scrap of paper was brought
out covered with Arabic writing, items of the day's expenditure, which
read more or less as follows:--

Chicken 7d.
Milk 1d.
Four eggs 21/2d.
Mutton 6d.
Apples 2d.
Vegetables 2d.
Bread three times a week 41/2d.
Butter twice a week 91/2d.

Charcoal for cooking purposes, and oil for lamps, added three shillings
to our moderate weekly expenditure. Living is cheap enough in Morocco,
nor are servants' wages heavy. S`lam and Tahara had eighteen shillings a
month and their food, which was simple indeed--a loaf each of native
bread a day, green tea, lump sugar, and odds and ends from our meals. Our
rent, it will be remembered, came to thirty shillings a month. Morocco
suits "reduced circumstances."

Once a week, one of the little donkeys, which passed along our "lane" in
droves, carrying charcoal into the sok, was waylaid, brought into the
garden, and its three pannierfuls commandeered for us and stored in the
mules' stable, where Tahara did the washing in a great tub bought from
Mr. Bewicke.

Milk was left every morning by a Moor, who took it in for sale to the
sok.

When the accounts were all settled up, S`lam would swing out of the room
with a "Bon soir tout-le-monde," unless he stayed to give R. a lesson in
Arabic, which he could write as well as read--an unusual thing, and
marking him for a scholar in his country.

Blood-feuds among the Riff tribe are common enough. S`lam's father was
shot when S`lam was a boy. As soon as he grew up, S`lam shot the man. He
had left the Riff in consequence: he was a "marked man," they said; but
he began to talk of going back again, and while he was with us he bought
a new French rifle. In the Riff he might be potted at, he might not: he
would risk that. The brother or son of the man whom he had shot would
never trouble to journey far for the purpose of shooting him. Why should
they? All in good time. Some day, when he came their way, they would put
a bullet into him. Only women die in their beds in the Riff. "Sudden
death, Good Lord, grant us."

Men in the R