the
town.

The birds from the mosque had waited for their second supply, for the
same programme had been carried out many times before, and they had
learned to expect it.

When they finished scrambling for the grain which the white pigeon could
afford to scorn, they fluttered back to the minaret, following a leader.
But the carrier flew away straight and far, his little body vanishing at
last as if swallowed up in the gold of the sunset. For he went west,
towards the white domes of Oued Tolga.

XXXIV

Still the woman stood looking after the bird, but the sun had dropped
behind the dunes, and she no longer needed to shade her eyes with her
hand. There was nothing more to expect till sunset to-morrow, when
something might or might not happen. If no message came, then there
would be only dullness and stagnation until the day when the Moorish
bath was sacredly kept for the great ladies of the marabout's household.
There were but two of these, yet they never went to the bath together,
nor had they ever met or spoken to one another. They were escorted to
the bath by their attendants at different hours of the same day; and
later their female servants were allowed to go, for no one but the women
of the saintly house might use the baths that day.

The woman on the white roof in the midst of the golden silence gazed
towards the west, though she looked for no event of interest; and her
eyes fixed themselves mechanically upon a little caravan which moved
along the yellow sand like a procession of black insects. She was so
accustomed to search the desert since the days, long ago, when she had
actually hoped for friends to come and take her away, that she could
differentiate objects at greater distances than one less trained to
observation. Hardly thinking of the caravan, she made out, nevertheless,
that it consisted of two camels, carrying bassourahs, a horse and Arab
rider, a brown pack camel, and a loaded mule, driven by two men who
walked.

They had evidently come from Oued Tolga, or at least from that
direction, therefore it was probable that their destination was the
Zaouia; otherwise, as it was already late, they would have stopped in
the city all night. Of course, it was possible that they were on their
way to the village, but it was a poor place, inhabited by very poor
people, many of them freed Negroes, who worked in the oases and lived
mostly upon dates. No caravans ever went out from there, because no man