wenty or thirty men, dressed in their best burnouses, draped
over new gandourahs, their heads swathed in clean white muslin turbans,
sat on the opposite side of the court, watching the "powder play"
furnished by two tall, handsome boys, who handled with delicate grace
and skill old-fashioned, long-muzzled guns inlaid with coral and silver,
heirlooms perhaps, and of some value even to antiquaries.

While the powder spoke, nobody had a thought for anything else. All eyes
were upon the boys with the guns, only travelling upward in ecstasy to
watch the puffs of smoke that belched out round and white as fat
snowballs. Then, when the music burst forth again, and a splendidly
handsome young Kabyle woman ran forward to begin the wild dance of the
body and of the hands--dear to the mountain men as to the nomads of the
desert--every one was at first absorbed in admiration of her movements.
But suddenly a child (one of a dozen in a row in front of all the women)
tired of the show, less amusing to him than the powder play, and looking
up, saw the two Roumis on the hill behind the wall. He nudged his
neighbour, and the neighbour, who happened to be a little girl, followed
with her eyes the upward nod of his head. So the news went round that
strangers had come uninvited to the wedding-feast, and men began to
frown and women to whisper, while the dancer lost interest in her own
tinklings and genuflections.

It was time for the intruders to make it known that business of some
sort, not idle curiosity, had brought them on the scene, and Nevill
stepped forward, holding out the visiting card given him by Josette, and
the crimson velvet case containing the watch which Stephen had bought in
Algiers.

XXII

An elderly man, with a reddish beard, got up from the row of men grouped
behind the musicians, and muttered to one of the youths who had been
making the powder speak. They argued for a moment, and then the boy,
handing his gun to the elder man, walked with dignity to a closed gate,
large enough to let in the goats and donkeys pertaining to the two
houses. This gate he opened half-way, standing in the aperture and
looking up sullenly as the Roumis came down the narrow, slippery track
which led to it.

"Cebah el-kheir, ia Sidi--Good day, sir," said Nevill, agreeably, in his
best Arabic. "Ta' rafi el-a' riya?--Do you speak Arabic?"

The young man bowed, not yet conciliated. "Ach men sebba jit lhena, ia
Sidi?--Why have you come