d been a
dark memory.

Achmet's voice dropped lower as he answered. "She lived till the day her
sister died. I never saw her face; but I was sent to bear each day to
her door the food she ate and a balass of water; and I did according to
my sentence. Yet I heard her voice. And once, at last, the day she
died, she spoke to me, and said from inside the hut: 'Thy work is done,
Achmet. Go in peace.' And that night she lay down on her sister's grave,
and in the morning she was found dead upon it."

David's eyes were blinded with tears. "It was too long," he said at
last, as though to himself.

"That day," continued Achmet, "there fell ill with leprosy the Christian
priest from this place who had served in that black service so long;
and then a fire leapt up in me. Zaida was gone--I had brought food and
a balass of water to her door those many times; there was naught to do,
since she was gone--"

Suddenly David took a step nearer to him and looked into the sullen and
drooping eyes. "Thou shalt go with me, Achmet. I will do this unlawful
act for thee. At daybreak I will give thee orders. Thou shalt join
me far from here--if I go to the Soudan," he added, with a sudden
remembrance of his position; and he turned away slowly.

After a moment, with muttered words, Achmet sank down upon the stone
again, drew a cake of dourha from his inner robe, and began to eat.

The camel-boy had lighted a fire, and he sat beside it warming his hands
at the blaze and still singing to himself:

"The bed of my love I will sprinkle with attar of roses,
The face of my love I will touch with the balm
With the balm of the tree from the farthermost wood,
From the wood without end, in the world without end.
My love holds the cup to my lips, and I drink of the cup,
And the attar of roses I sprinkle will soothe like the evening dew,
And the balm will be healing and sleep, and the cup I will drink,
I will drink of the cup my love holds to my lips--"

David stood listening. What power was there in desert life that could
make this poor camel-driver, at the end of a long day of weariness and
toil and little food and drink, sing a song of content and cheerfulness?
The little needed, the little granted, and no thought beyond--save the
vision of one who waited in the hut by the onion-field. He gathered
himself together and tuned his mind to the scene through which he had
just passed, and then to the interview he would have with Ka