e. You know, if
you're an Arab, or even a Kabyle, it takes you a week to be married
properly, and you have high jinks every day: music and dancing and
eating, and if you've money enough, above all you make the powder speak.
Mouni's people are doing her well. What a good thing we've got the
watch! Even with Josette's introduction we mightn't have been able to
come near the bride, unless we had something to offer worth her having."

The mountain village of Yacoua had no suburbs, no outlying houses. The
one-story mud huts with their pointed red roofs, utterly unlike Arab
dwellings, were huddled together, with only enough distance between for
a man and a mule or a donkey to pass. The best stood in pairs, with a
walled yard between; and as Stephen and Nevill searched anxiously for
some one to point out the home of Mouni, from over a wall which seemed
to be running down the mountain-side, came a white puff of smoke and a
strident bang, then more, one after the other. Again the wailing of the
raita began, and there was no longer any need to ask the way.

"That's where the party is--in that yard," said Nevill, beginning to be
excited. "Now, what sort of reception will they give us? That's the next
question."

"Can't we tell, the first thing, that we've come from Algiers with a
present for the bride?" suggested Stephen.

"We can if they understand Arabic," Nevill answered. "But the Kabyle
lingo's quite different--Berber, or something racy of the soil. I ought
to have brought Mohammed to interpret."

So steeply did the yard between the low houses run downhill, that,
standing at the top of a worn path like a seam in some old garment, the
two Europeans could look over the mud wall. Squalid as were the mud huts
and the cattle-yard connecting them, the picture framed in the square
enclosure blazed with colour. It was barbaric, and beautiful in its
savagery.

Squatting on the ground, with the last rank against the house wall, were
several rows of women, all unveiled, their uncovered arms jewelled to
the elbows, embracing their knees. The afternoon sunlight shone on their
ceremonial finery, setting fire to the red, blue and green enamel of
their necklaces, their huge hoop earrings and the jewelled silver chains
pinned to their scarlet or yellow head-wrappings, struck out strange
gleams from the flat, round brooches which fastened their gaily striped
robes on their shoulders, and turned their great dark eyes into brown
topazes. T