from a silver case.

"In my wanderings," he said, "I have been to many strange places. I
have been to the country which you probably do not know, and which the
traveller who writes books about countries seldom visits. There are
queer little villages perched on the spurs of the bleakest hills you
ever saw. I have lived with communities which acknowledge no king and
no government. These have their laws handed down to them from father to
son--it is a nation without a written language. They administer
their laws rigidly and drastically. The punishments they award are
cruel--inhuman. I have seen, the woman taken in adultery stoned to death
as in the best Biblical traditions, and I have seen the thief blinded."

T. X. shivered.

"I have seen the false witness stand up in a barbaric market place
whilst his tongue was torn from him. Sometimes the Turks or the piebald
governments of the state sent down a few gendarmes and tried a sort
of sporadic administration of the country. It usually ended in the
representative of the law lapsing into barbarism, or else disappearing
from the face of the earth, with a whole community of murderers eager
to testify, with singular unanimity, to the fact that he had either
committed suicide or had gone off with the wife of one of the townsmen.

"In some of these communities the candle plays a big part. It is not the
candle of commerce as you know it, but a dip made from mutton fat. Strap
three between the fingers of your hands and keep the hand rigid with two
flat pieces of wood; then let the candles burn down lower and lower--can
you imagine? Or set a candle in a gunpowder trail and lead the trail to
a well-oiled heap of shavings thoughtfully heaped about your naked feet.
Or a candle fixed to the shaved head of a man--there are hundreds of
variations and the candle plays a part in all of them. I don't know
which Kara had cause to hate the worst, but I know one or two that he
has employed."

"Was he as bad as that?" asked T. X.

John Lexman laughed.

"You don't know how bad he was," he said.

Towards the end of the luncheon the waiter brought a note in to T. X.
which had been sent on from his office.

"Dear Mr. Meredith,

"In answer to your enquiry I believe my daughter is in London, but I did
not know it until this morning. My banker informs me that my daughter
called at the bank this morning and drew a considerable sum of money
from her private account, but where she has gone and w