y-the
return to the mother's milk, throwing back to all the Pharaohs. Well,
what then?" he added cheerfully, his smile breaking out again. "Where
has he gone, our Saadat?"

"To Ebn Ezra Bey at the Coptic Monastery by the Etl Tree, where your
prophet Christ slept when a child."

Lacey hummed to himself meditatively. "A sort of last powwow--Rome
before the fall. Everything wrong, eh? Kaid turned fanatic, Nahoum on
the tiles watching for the Saadat to fall, things trembling for want of
hard cash. That's it, isn't it, Mahommed?"

Mahommed nodded, but his look was now alert, and less sombre. He had
caught at something vital and confident in Lacey's tone. He drew nearer,
and listened closely.

"Well, now, my gentle gazelle, listen unto me," continued Lacey. He
suddenly leaned forward, and spoke in subdued but rapid tones. "Say,
Mahommed, once upon a time there was an American man, with a shock of
red hair, and a nature like a spring-lock. He went down to Mexico, with
a million or two of his own money got honestly by an undisputed will
from an undisputed father--you don't understand that, but it doesn't
matter--and with a few millions of other people's money, for to gamble
in mines and railways and banks and steamship companies--all to do with
Mexico what the Saadat has tried to do in Egypt with less money; but not
for the love of Allah, same as him. This American was going to conquer
like Cortez, but his name was Thomas Tilman Lacey, and he had a lot of
gall. After years of earnest effort, he lost his hair and the millions
of the Infatuated Conquistadores. And by-and-by he came to Cairo with
a thimbleful of income, and began to live again. There was a civil
war going on in his own country, but he thought that one out of forty
millions would not be strictly missed. So he stayed in Egypt; and the
tale of his days in Egypt, is it not written with a neboot of domwood in
the book of Mahommed Hassan the scribe?"

He paused and beamed upon the watchful Mahommed, who, if he did not
understand all that had been said, was in no difficulty as to the drift
and meaning of the story.

"Aiwa, effendi," he urged impatiently. "It is a long ride to the Etl
Tree, and the day is far spent."

"Inshallah, you shall hear, my turtle-dove! One day there came to Cairo,
in great haste, a man from Mexico, looking for the foolish one called T.
T. Lacey, bearing glad news. And the man from Mexico blew his trumpet,
and straightway T. T. Lacey fell