ill find me
tripping? It would take a clever fellow to do that. They are willing
enough to agree to my terms when they want to borrow, but when I claim
my own, there is all this bother and outcry, and I am dragged before the
sheikh forsooth!"

But he looked more serious when the Sheikh Burrachee said to him--

"Daireh, where are the two wills you stole from Burrows and Fagan, the
Dublin lawyers, when you ran away from their employ?"

Surely such an incongruous question was never put in an Arab town in the
heart of Africa by a sheikh dressed in bernouse and turban, with a
jewel-hilted yataghan at his side, sitting cross-legged on a cushion.
No wonder Daireh was flabbergasted; such a thunderbolt out of a clear
sky has seldom fallen upon any man.

"Your Mightiness is mistaken," he stammered. "I have lived, earning an
honest livelihood as a poor merchant, at Khartoum and Berber, Alexandria
and Cairo. But what is Dublin? I know it not."

"Is that your photograph?" asked Harry Forsyth, suddenly, in English.

"No!" replied Daireh, startled into answering in the same language; and
the moment he did so he could have bitten his tongue out for vexation.

The sheikh took the likeness in his hand; it was unmistakable.

"Here is your portrait, and it was taken in Dublin, for it bears that
name upon it. Also you know English," he said.

"I learned that language at Alexandria," replied Daireh, more firmly now
he had collected his wits; "and I had a brother very like me who went
beyond the seas, and may have lived in the place you speak of, for I
never heard of him again."

"You speak the words of Sheytan, the father of lies," said the sheikh
sternly; "where are the stolen documents?"

"I never heard of them, your Justice; and I know not what you mean,"
replied Daireh, striving, but with indifferent success, not to tremble.

"Hassan!" called the sheikh, and a tall, stalwart black stepped forward,
with a courbash in his hand. "Twenty lashes to refresh his memory."

"Mercy, great sheikh; oh, favourite of Allah, have mercy, and listen to
me!" cried the wretch; but without heeding his cries four men seized him
and flung him on the ground face downwards. Two held his legs, one his
arms, and a third put a knee on his back between the shoulder-blades to
keep him in position. It was all done in a twinkling.

Then Hassan stepped up, courbash in hand, and measured his distance.
The courbash is a fearful whip made of hippop