ew old
fruit-trees, one of which, a plum, showed a good many purple fruit here
and there.

The lawyer made a peculiar noise with his mouth as he drew rein, the
others following his example.

"Now, there are some ruins that you might very well examine," he said,
pointing upwards with the barrel of his gun. "Shall we dismount and
climb up?"

"To see these?" said the professor quietly; and then a change came over
his countenance, and he laughed softly as he turned round to look his
travelling companion in the face. "Which stones do you want to look
at?" he said.

"Those, sir, those," cried Mr Burne fiercely. "Can't you see?"

"No," said the professor smiling; "I do not know which you mean, whether
it is the building stones or the plum stones."

"Tchah!" ejaculated the old gentleman, with his face puckering up into a
comical grin. "There, come along."

Yussuf smiled too as he rode on, and at the end of a few moments he said
gravely:

"The plums would not have been worth gathering, effendi. They are a
bitter, sour kind."

"Grapes are too, when the fox cannot reach them--eh, Lawrence?"

No more was said, for every one was exhausted with the long slow ride.
The little wind there was came from behind, and they were wandering in
and out to such an extent that the soft mountain-breeze was completely
shut off, and the horses were beginning to suffer terribly now from want
of water to quench their burning thirst.

At last, in front, that for which they had been hoping to see appeared
to be at hand, for a patch of broad green bushes at the foot of a rock
told plainly that their fresh growth must be the result of abundant
watering at the roots, and, pressing onward, to their delight the horses
proved the correctness of their belief by breaking into a canter, and
soon carrying them to where the defile ended in one of larger extent, at
whose junction a spring of clear water gushed from the foot of a rock,
and Lawrence cried eagerly:

"Why, this is the old place where we left Hamed!"

And so it proved to be.

Here, pursued or not, it was absolutely necessary to stop and recruit
the horses, even if they had been prepared to suffer themselves; so a
halt was made, one of the party took it in turn to be sentry, and the
package containing provision was undone, the horses finding plenty of
herbage to satisfy their wants.

Yussuf took the first watch, while Lawrence and his friends were
enjoying their repast with the