the secret leak out?
Better for the ladies if the Touareg disguise should hide the truth, as
it was meant to do."

"Why not indeed? Since we weren't lucky enough to rid his wife--and the
world of the marabout."

"Then we're agreed: unless something happens to change our minds, we
were attacked by Touaregs."

Sabine smiled grimly. "Duprez bet," he answered, "that I should find
they were not Arabs, but Touaregs. He will enjoy saying 'I told you
so.'"

* * * * * * *

That night, and for many nights to come, there was wailing in the
Zaouia. The marabout had gone out to meet his son, who had been away
from school on a pilgrimage, and returning at dark, to avoid the great
heat of the day, had been bitten by a viper. Thus, at least, pronounced
the learned Arab physician. It was of the viper bite he died, so it was
said, and no one outside the Zaouia knew of the great man's death until
days afterwards, when he was already buried. Even in the Zaouia it was
not known by many that he had gone away or returned from a journey, or
that he lay ill. In spite of this secrecy and mystery, however, there
was no gossip, but only wild wailing, of mourners who refused to be
comforted. And if certain persons, to the number of twenty or more, were
missing from their places in the Zaouia, nothing was said, after Si
Maieddine had talked with the holy men of the mosque. If these missing
ones were away, and even if they should never come back, it was because
they were needed to carry out the marabout's wishes, at a vast distance.
But now, the dearest wishes of Sidi Mohammed would never be fulfilled.
That poignant knowledge was a knife in every man's heart; for men of
ripe age or wisdom in the Zaouia knew what these wishes were, and how
some day they were to have come true through blood and fire.

All were sad, though no tongue spoke of any other reason for sadness,
except the inestimable loss of the Saint. And sadder than the saddest
was Si Maieddine, who seemed to have lost his youth.

LII

It is a long cry from the bordj of Toudja among the dunes of the
southern desert, to Algiers, yet Nevill begged that he might be taken
home. "You know why," he said to Stephen, and his eyes explained, if
Stephen needed explanations. Nevill thought there might be some chance
of seeing Josette in Algiers, if he were dying. But the army surgeon
from Oued Tolga pronounced it unsafe to take him so