had pounced on him, and in less than a minute after
that he was kicking in the noose of a hide rope slung over a
house-beam. I don't know what they hanged him for. No one
apparently knew. But they used his carcase for a target and shot
it almost to pieces.

I kept on looking for Grim, although the task seemed hopeless.
Of course, I could not give a hint of my real purpose. But as
Grim knew that the talk about a school-teacher was my passport
to the place, it seemed possible that he might use that as an
excuse for getting in touch with me. So I told Ahmed to show
me the schools.

They weren't worth looking at--mere tumble-down sheds in which
Moslem boys were taught to say the Koran by heart. The places
where Christian missionaries once had been were all turned into
stores, and even into stables for the horses of the notables.

So I returned to ben Nazir's house, and found old Sheikh Anazeh
sitting outside on the step, as motionless as a tobacco-store
Indian but twice as picturesque. He still had his own rifle over
his knees, and the plundered one slung over his shoulder by a
strap; he never stirred abroad unarmed.

I asked him what the conference of notables was going to be
about, and he told me to mind my own business. That struck me as
an excellent idea, so, not having slept at all the previous
night, I went upstairs and lay on the bed. There was no lock on
the door, so I set the chair against it.

Ben Nazir was a man who had traveled a great deal, and picked up
western notions of hospitality to add to the inborn eastern sense
of sacredness in the relation between host and guest. It seems
that an hour or two later he came to take me down to a Gargantuan
meal, but, feeling the chair against the door, and hearing
snores, he decided it was better manners to let me lie in peace.

So I did not wake up again until after midnight. The moonlight
was streaming through a little high-perched window, and fell on
the white-robed, ghostly-looking figure of a man, who sat with
crossed legs on the end of the bed. I thought I was dead and
in hell.

That is no picturesque exaggeration about a man's hair standing
when he is terrified. It really does. I would have yelled
aloud, if the breath would have come, but there is a trick of
sudden fear that seems to grip your lungs and hold them impotent.
The thing on the end of the bed had no eye-brows. It grinned as
if it knew all about evil, and were hungry, and livi