this Prophet in Khalid's cellar. For
Khalid himself never gives us the facts in the case. Our Scribe,
however, comes not short in this.

"The picture of the Prophet Jeremiah," writes he, "Khalid hung on the
wall, above his bed. And every night he would look up to it
invokingly, muttering I know not what. One evening, while in this
posture, he took up his lute and trolled a favourite ditty. For three
days and three nights that picture hung on the wall. And on the
morning of the fourth day--it was a cold December morning, I
remember--he took it down and lighted the fire with it. The Pamphlet
he had read a few days since, he also threw into the fire, and
thereupon called to me saying, 'Come, Shakib, and warm yourself.'"

And the Pamphlet, we learn, which was thus baptised in the same fire
with the Prophet's picture, was Tom Paine's _Age of Reason_.

CHAPTER VI

THE SUMMER AFTERNOON OF A SHAM

For two years and more Khalid's young mind went leaping from one swing
to another, from one carousel or toboggan-chute to the next, without
having any special object in view, without knowing why and wherefor.
He even entered such mazes of philosophy, such labyrinths of mysticism
as put those of the Arabian grammaticasters in the shade. To him,
education was a sport, pursued in a free spirit after his own fancy,
without method or discipline. For two years and more he did little but
ramble thus, drawing meanwhile on his account in the bank, and burning
pamphlets.

One day he passes by a second-hand book-shop, which is in the
financial hive of the city, hard by a church and within a stone's
throw from the Stock Exchange. The owner, a shabby venerable,
standing there, pipe in mouth, between piles of pamphlets and
little pyramids of books, attracts Khalid. He too occupies a
cellar. And withal he resembles the Prophet in the picture which was
burned with Tom Paine's _Age of Reason_. Nothing in the face at
least is amiss. A flowing, serrated, milky beard, with a touch of
gold around the mouth; an aquiline nose; deep set blue eyes canopied
with shaggy brows; a forehead broad and high; a dome a little frowsy
but not guilty of a hair--the Prophet Jeremiah! Only one thing, a clay
pipe which he seldom took out of his mouth except to empty and
refill, seemed to take from the prophetic solemnity of the face.
Otherwise, he is as grim and sullen as the Prophet. In his voice,
however, there is a supple sweetness which the hard lines in