ing the bulbuls
calling in the direction of Najma's house that evening, he repairs
thither. But the crabbed, cruel uncle turns him away also, and bolts
the door. Whereupon Khalid, who was then in the first of his teens,
takes a big scabrous rock and sends it flying against that door. The
crabbed uncle rushes out, blustering, cursing; the nephew takes up
another of those scabrous missiles and sends it whizzing across his
shoulder. The second one brushes his ear. The third sends the blood
from his temple. And this, while beating a retreat and cursing his
father and his uncle and their ancestors back to fifty generations. He
is now safe in the poplar grove, and his uncle gives up the charge.
With a broken noddle he returns home, and Khalid with a broken heart
wends his way to the Acropolis, the only shelter in sight. In relating
this story, Shakib mentions "the horrible old moon, who was wickedly
smiling over the town that night." A broken icon, a broken door, a
broken pate,--a big price this, the crabbed uncle and the cruel father
had to pay for thwarting the will of little Khalid. "But he entered
the Acropolis a conqueror," says our Scribe; "he won the battle." And
he slept in the temple, in the portico thereof, as sound as a
muleteer. And the swallows in the niches above heard him sleep.

In the morning he girds his loins with a firm resolution. No longer
will he darken his father's door. He becomes a muleteer and
accomplishes the success of which we have spoken. His first beau ideal
was to own the best horse in Baalbek; and to be able to ride to the
camp of the Arabs and be mistaken for one of them, was his first great
ambition. Which he realises sooner than he thought he would. For
thrift, grit and perseverance, are a few of the rough grains in his
character. But no sooner he is possessed of his ideal than he begins
to loosen his hold upon it. He sold his mare to the tourist, and was
glad he did not attain the same success in his first love. For he
loved his mare, and he could not have loved his cousin Najma more.
"The realisation is a terrible thing," writes our Scribe, quoting his
Master. But when this fine piece of wisdom was uttered, whether when
he was sailing paper boats in Baalbek, or unfurling his sails in New
York, we can not say.

And now, warming himself on the fire of his first ideal, Khalid will
seek the shore and launch into unknown seas towards unknown lands.
From the City of Baal to the City of Demiu