iff who have blood-feuds will not go out of their houses in
the early mornings without first sending the women and children to look
if the coast is clear: neither will they walk up a hedgerow nor in a
wood, but across the fields, keeping well in the open, since murder is
always committed out of sight, decently, and in good order.

A man living in Tetuan now, has a blood-feud with an enemy, who has been
in consequence obliged to move to Tangier. Sometimes he comes over,
secretly, by night, to see his mother, and lies hidden in her house till
the sok is full of market people in the middle of the day, when he can go
out into the crowd without running great risk,--though in the sok a
quarrel sometimes arises; in a flash, guns are up at men's
shoulders--bang--bang--and bullets ping into the soft walls, if not into
some one or other. Only lately a boy was shot twice in the thigh,
happening to be in the way in a scuffle.

S`lam and Tahara were often amusing, if not interesting: never
commonplace or "well-meaning." One corner of the roof of Jinan Dolero had
been left unwhitewashed, the whitewashers' ladder was still there, and
one morning S`lam came to say in his best French, "Deux mesdames. Pour
arranger en haut."

The two madams were the whitewashers--two black madams, clad in a couple
of striped towels each, Ali Slowee's slaves, bought for, say, L7 each. A
very ragged countrywoman who came and weeded the garden, and seemed
almost devoid of intelligence, was also a madam.

S`lam was deft with a needle; he borrowed one of ours and a thimble, sat
himself down in the kitchen, and stitched away at a large white garment
"pour Maman," he said--sat up half the night, finished it, and took it to
her next day.

He did not make a bad man-servant; but he was fond of tempting Fate by
carrying trays, laden with china and glass, balanced on one hand; then he
would stoop down and pick up a kettle in the other, there would be an
ominous clatter, if not crash, in the tray amongst our crockery, and
S`lam would murmur reproachfully under his breath, "O tray! tray!"

He bought a new jellab for wearing on visits to the sok; and after it had
been proudly shown us, it was found, neatly folded up, placed on a
hat-box in our bedroom. When we asked why it was there, he was taken
aback. "Mightn't he keep it there? It was new: it was very clean."

One evening, when he came in to settle accounts, he said that he wished
to write a letter. Would we