lls, which rose steeply from the flat
bottom of the gold-lined cup--Ghardaia, Beni-Isguen, Bou-Noura, Melika,
and El-Ateuf. The top of each hill was prolonged to a point by the
tapering minaret of one of those Abadite mosques which the girl thought
the most Eastern of all things imported from the East. The oasis which
gave wealth to the M'Zabites surged round the towns like a green sea at
ebb tide, sucked back from a strand of gold; and as the caravan wound
down the wonderful road with which the Beni-M'Zab had traced the sheer
side of their enchanted cup, the groaning of hundreds of well-chains
came plaintively up on the wind.

The well-stones had the obelisk shape of the minarets, in miniature; and
Negroes--freed slaves of the rich M'Zabites--running back and forth in
pairs, to draw the water, were mere struggling black ants, seen from the
cup's rim. The houses of the five towns were like bleached skeletons,
and the arches that spanned the dark, narrow streets were their ribs.

Arrived at the bottom of the cup, it was necessary to pass through the
longest and only modern street of Ghardaia, the capital of the M'Zab. A
wind had sprung up, to lift the sand which sprinkled the hard-trodden
ground with thick powder of gold dust, and whirl it westward against the
fire of sunset, red as a blowing spray of blood. "It is a sign of
trouble when the sand of the desert turns to blood," muttered Fafann to
her mistress, quoting a Bedouin proverb.

The men of the M'Zab do not willingly give lodging to strangers, least
of all to Arabs; and at Beni-Isguen, holy city and scene of strange
mysteries, no stranger may rest for the night. But Maieddine, respected
by the ruling power, as by his own people, had a friend or two at every
Bureau Arabe and military station. A French officer stationed at
Ghardaia had married a beautiful Arab girl of good family distantly
related to the Agha of the Ouled-Serrin, and being at Algiers on
official business, his wife away at her father's tent, he had promised
to lend his house, a few miles out of the town, to Si Maieddine. It was
a long, low building of toub, the sun-dried sand-blocks of which most
houses are made in the ksour, or Sahara villages, but it had been
whitewashed, and named the Pearl.

There they slept, in the cool shadow of the oasis, and early next
morning went on.

As soon as they had passed out of this hidden valley, where a whole race
of men had gathered for refuge and wealth-buil