ts
over there by the north door now--he will ask you questions about
me presently. Tell him I'm leaving for Damascus in the morning.
If he asks what we have been speaking about so long, tell him I
brought you the compliments of Mustapha Kemal."

"I will tell him to go to jahannam!"

"Better be civil to him. His hour comes tomorrow."

The sheikh led the way along one side of the inner of three
concentric parts into which the mosque is divided by rows of
marble columns, until we came to a cavernous opening in the
floor, where steps hewn in the naked rock led downward into a
cave that underlies the spot on which tradition says Abraham made
ready to sacrifice his son.

It was very dark below. Only one little oil lamp was burning, on
a rock shaped like an altar in one corner. It cast leaping
shadows that looked like ghosts on the smooth, uneven walls. The
whole place was hardly more than twenty feet wide each way.
There was no furniture, not even the usual mats--nothing but
naked rock to lie or sit on, polished smooth as glass by
centuries of naked feet.

I was going to sit in a corner, but Grim seized my arm and
pointed to the centre of the floor, stamping with his foot to
show the exact place I should take. It rang vaguely hollow under
the impact, and Suliman, already frightened by the shadows,
seized my hand in a paroxysm of terror.

"You've got to prove you're a man tonight and stick it out!" Grim
said to him in English; and with that, rather than argue the
point and risk a scene, he followed the sheikh up the steps and
disappeared. Grim's methods with Suliman were a strange mixture
of understanding sympathy and downright indifference to sentiment
that got him severely criticized by the know-it-all party, who
always, everywhere condemn. But he certainly got results.

A legion of biblical and Koranic devils owned Suliman. They were
the child's religion. When he dared, he spat at the name of
Christianity. Whenever Grim whipped him, which he had to do now
and again, for theft or for filthy language, he used to curse
Grim's religion, although Grim's religion was a well-kept secret,
known to none but himself. But the kid was loyal to Grim with a
courage and persistence past belief, and Grim knew how to worm
the truth out of him and make him keep his word, which is more
than some of the professional reformers know how to do with
their proteges. I believe that Suliman would rather have earned
Grim's cur