ing himself. No people on earth endure such hardships as this
my people; never enough to eat, burnt in the summer, frozen in the
winter, buried in sand, tortured with thirst, fleeing from place to
place, never at peace, yet always happy in his miserable tent.

"For the _gazu_ or raid on caravan or camp, which will yield booty of
horse, or camel, or women--well! that is in the blood, and both sides
are prepared. If you or they should have the better horses, or the
better cunning, both of which we of the East so dearly love, one can
hardly be expected to sympathise with those who lose from want of
forethought."

And as he spoke, he raised a light spear, which he held in his hand,
and drove it through one edge of the tent flap which covered the
entrance, deep into the sand.

"That is a sign that I am coming back, and believe me, the worst of
Arabs would pass this way and seeing the sign would leave my belongings
unmolested. Yes! even if many moons passed, until the skins had
rotted, and the sands had covered the rotted remains."

After which explanation, Jill remained silent for a space, and then
approached her camel, feeling that the rapping of her knuckles, however
slight, had been quite unwarranted, for her sympathy in human beings
and their feelings was great, and the understanding which kept her from
wounding the sensibilities of those humans even greater.

Her wish to draw out the man had caused her figurative feet to make a
_faux pas_, in fact she felt that her pedestal had tilted ever so
slightly, causing the drapery of decency, and courtesy, to swing aside
for one moment, exposing a particle of clay upon the ivory of her
beautiful feet to the eyes of the man whose outlook on life was so
broad, whose principles were so stern, and whose people she had so
rudely criticised. Therefore she was dissatisfied with herself.
Though, if she had known it, the man looked upon her with the same
solicitude and tenderness, as you or I would look upon the babe, who,
in its first efforts to get from table to chair, pulls the table-cloth
about its unsteady little feet.

Also sensing that the woman he loved was troubled, there was no
gladness in the heart of the Arab, so that, in his anxiety to remove
the pebble from the path, he approached her, as she stood with skirt
lifted in readiness to mount her recumbent camel, whereupon she looked
up at the grave face and apologised truly and sweetly, and by her sweet
and humble ac