ured, then
vomited forth again by strange black cloud-monsters. The old brown
palm-trunks, on which the village was built, were repeated in the still
water, and seemed to go down and down, as if their roots might reach to
the other side of the world.

Over the crumbling doorways of the miserable houses bleached skulls and
bones of animals were nailed for luck. The red light of the setting sun
stained them as if with blood, and they were more than ever disgusting
to the watcher on the white roof. They were the symbols of superstitions
the most Eastern and barbaric, ideas which she hated, as she was
beginning to hate all Eastern things and people.

The streak of rose which meant a flock of flying flamingoes had faded
out of the sky. The birds seemed to have vanished into the sunset, and
hardly had they gone when the loud crystalline voice of the muezzin
began calling the faithful to prayer. Work stopped for the day. The men
and youths of the Zaouia climbed the worn stairs to the roof of the
mosque, where, in their white turbans and burnouses, they prostrated
themselves before Allah, going down on their faces as one man. The doves
of the minaret--called Imams, because they never leave the mosque or
cease to prostrate themselves, flying head downwards--began to wheel and
cry plaintively. The moment when the message might come was here at
last.

The white roof had a wall, which was low in places, in others very high,
so high that no one standing behind it could be seen. This screen of
whitewashed toub was arranged to hide persons on the roof from those on
the roof of the mosque; but window-like openings had been made in it,
filled in with mashrabeyah work of lace-like pattern; an art brought to
Africa long ago by the Moors, after perfecting it in Granada. And this
roof was not the only one thus screened and latticed. There was another,
where watchers could also look down into the court of the fountain, at
the carved doors taken from the Romans, and up to the roof of the mosque
with all its little domes. From behind those other lace-like windows in
the roof-wall, sparkled such eyes as only Ouled Nail girls can have; but
the first watcher hated to think of those eyes and their wonderful
fringe of black lashes. It was an insult to her that they should
beautify this house, and she ignored their existence, though she had
heard her negresses whispering about them.

While the faithful prayed, a few of the wheeling doves flew ac