to be
staring up at the car. I wonder if they're on their way here!"

"It may be the Caid, riding home with a friend, or a servant," Nevill
suggested. "If so, I'll bet my hat there are other eyes than ours
watching for him, peering out through some spy-hole in one of the
gate-towers."

His guess was right. It was the Caid coming home, and Maieddine was with
him; for Lella M'Barka had been obliged to rest for three days at the
farmhouse on the hill, and the Caid's guest had accompanied him before
sunrise this morning to see a favourite white mehari, or racing camel,
belonging to Sidi Elaid ben Sliman, which was very ill, in care of a
wise man of the village. Now the mehari was dead, and as Maieddine
seemed impatient to get back, they were riding home, in spite of the
noon heat.

Maieddine had left the house reluctantly this morning. Not that he could
often see Victoria, who was nursing M'Barka, and looking so wistful that
he guessed she had half hoped to find her sister waiting behind the
white wall on the golden hill.

Though he could expect little of the girl's society, and there was
little reason to fear that harm would come to her, or that she would
steal away in his absence, still he had hated to ride out of the gate
and leave her. If the Caid had not made a point of his coming, he would
gladly have stayed behind. Now, when he looked up and saw a yellow
motor-car at the gate, he believed that his feeling had been a
presentiment, a warning of evil, which he ought so have heeded.

He and the Caid were a long way off when he caught sight of the car, and
heard its pantings, carried by the clear desert air. He could not be
certain of its identity, but he prided himself upon his keen sight and
hearing, and where they failed, instinct stepped in. He was sure that it
was the car which had waited for Stephen Knight when the _Charles Quex_
came in, the car of Nevill Caird, about whom he had made inquiries
before leaving Algiers. Maieddine knew, of course, that Victoria had
been to the Djenan el Djouad, and he was intensely suspicious as well as
jealous of Knight, because of the letter Victoria had written. He knew
also that the two Englishmen had been asking questions at the Hotel de
la Kasbah; and he was not surprised to see the yellow car in front of
the Caid's gates. Now that he saw it, he felt dully that he had always
known it would follow him.

If only he had been in the house, it would not have mattered. He woul