r
us by making scouts into the desert. Besides, I imagine that the
entrance to the tower is guarded."

"When morning comes, I will eat wool and breathe fire and scare them
away," said Bouchardy.

"To do that you must show yourself," said Ducardanoy. "And they will
fill you full of lead while you are filling yourself with wool. But if
we can scare them, it will be the only way we can get rid of them."

"I have it," said Bouchardy.

A moment later the sentinel at the foot of the town gave an exclamation
of surprise, for there, opposite him, against the white walls of the
Sheik's tent, in the midst of a blaze of light, stood a French soldier
bowing to him. Promptly he sighted his ancient flint-lock, and sent a
bullet between the soldier's eyes.

"Mashallah," said the sentinel, for the soldier kept on bowing, and the
hole in his head moved from his nose to the roots of his hair and back
again as he did so.

"The devil himself," said the sentinel: and even before he finished
saying it, the soldier had vanished, and there stood the devil--a huge
black fellow grinning and bowing.

Bang! went the sentinel's gun again, and by this time the whole camp was
aroused and staring at the Sheik's tent, muttering and moaning the
while. The tent flap opened and the Sheik himself stepped out, and
immediately there appeared on the white robes across his broad chest a
great bloody splash, in the midst of which shone a hideous death's head.
A cry of terror arose, and the Arabs began scurrying about in the
darkness, saddling their horses and camels, the women and children
screaming, and in the midst of the confusion there appeared in a
loop-hole of the tower the face of a man illuminated by the glow of the
fire he was breathing. Picket-ropes and saddle-girths were dropped, and
those who were not already mounted rushed away on foot.

"We took in more money from that entertainment than we ever did in a
year from the sales of corn medicine after our ordinary entertainments,"
said Bouchardy. "They have left behind them forty camels, ten horses,
twelve Damascus swords, six silver pipes, eighteen bales of silk,
thirty-five gold bracelets, six dozen rings, eight gold inlaid bridles,
and we haven't looked in the Sheik's treasure-chest yet. Let us abandon
the profession of chiropody, and buy estates at Nouvelle Saar-Louis. It
is a pleasant place to live in, and will be convenient for us in case we
start out on other expeditions to be robbed b