nized it at once as having belonged to S`lam's late
master, who always kept drugs in his house, and the name of whose English
chemist was on the label.

Miss Z---- poured a teaspoonful into a tumbler, and returned the bottle
to Tahara, who was getting rabid at the delay. The teaspoonful we decided
should be given to one of Miss Z----'s little chickens which she was
rearing. I said I would come in the morning and hear her report.

Meanwhile, Tahara had refolded and hidden the precious bottle as it was
before, and Miss Z---- had managed more or less to reassure her,
promising her that she was not poisoned this time, and laughing at her
panic. The pain of which she had complained had no doubt a natural cause:
giddiness might come on through bending over the charcoal fire cooking
dinner, Miss Z---- told her. Now Tahara's only terror was that S`lam
should ever find out what had happened. The bottle must be taken
home--must be replaced exactly where it had been found.

Unsatisfactory as such a course was, there was some risk in pursuing any
other. S`lam, if he found out that his wife had betrayed him or had
suspected him and come to us, might shoot her like a dog, in a passion,
and be inside the borders of the Riff in a few hours. And who would blame
him, if he gave as his reason for his whole line of conduct that his wife
had been unfaithful to him, false though such a statement might be?

A girl in Tetuan a few years ago was _suspected_ of having been seduced.
Her father took her and her mother out to the Mussulman cemetery, within
sight and hearing of the city--the girl was sixteen: he shot her on the
road, and he and the mother dug a grave and buried her by the roadside.
They went home, and no one said a word. The man still lives in Tetuan.

Miss Z---- evidently shared Tahara's fears, and was anxious to allay any
suspicions which S`lam might begin to entertain. First, however, she
found out from Tahara that S`lam had no intention of poisoning the
signoritas (_us_)--that was _quite_ a mistake--at least so the girl
assured her. Then, having once more reassured Tahara about her own
health, Miss Z---- led her downstairs; there she explained to S`lam and
to his old mother that the girl was very nervous, that she had not felt
well, was to take a pill that night (one had been given her), and was to
keep quiet to-morrow, in which case she ought soon to be quite right.

Miss Z---- wanted to walk out with me and to sleep at Jin