the bazaar, and came back with an armful of meats and vegetables.

So it was that when Fielding returned he found Mahommed Seti and a
savoury mess awaiting him. Also there was coffee and a bottle of brandy
which Seti had looted in the bazaar. In one doorway stood Fielding; in
another stood Mahommed Seti, with the same grin which had served
his purpose all the way from Cairo, his ugly face behind it, and his
prodigious shoulders below it, and the huge chest from which came forth,
like the voice of a dove:

"God give thee long life, saadat el bey!"

Now an M.D. degree and a course in St. Bartholomew's Hospital do not
necessarily give a knowledge of the human soul, though the outlying
lands of the earth have been fattened by those who thought there
was knowledge and salvation in a conquered curriculum. Fielding Bey,
however, had never made pretence of understanding the Oriental mind, so
he discreetly took his seat and made no remarks. From sheer instinct,
however, when he came to the coffee he threw a boot which caught
Mahommed Seti in the middle of the chest, and said roughly: "French, not
Turkish, idiot!"

Then Mahommed Seti grinned, and he knew that he was happy; for it was
deep in his mind that that was the Inglesi's way of offering a long
engagement. In any case Seti had come to stay. Three times he made
French coffee that night before it suited, and the language of Fielding
was appropriate in each case. At last a boot, a native drum, and a
wood sculpture of Pabst the lion-headed goddess, established perfect
relations between them. They fell into their places of master and man as
accurately as though the one had smitten and the other served for twenty
years.

The only acute differences they had were upon two points--the cleaning
of the medicine bottles and surgical instruments, and the looting. But
it was wonderful to see how Mahommed Seti took the kourbash at the hands
of Fielding, when he shied from the medicine bottles. He could have
broken, or bent double with one twist, the weedy, thin-chested Fielding.
But though he saw a deadly magic and the evil eye in every stopper, and
though to him the surgical instruments were torturing steels which the
devil had forged for his purposes, he conquered his own prejudices so
far as to assist in certain bad cases which came in Fielding's way on
the journey down the Nile.

The looting was a different matter. Had not Mahommed Seti looted all his
life--looted from his nati