save a love for their own and their bellies."

"Lord, you speak truth," said Wafa, the superior Arab of him responding
to the confidence.

"Now, if you make to kill the lord Tibbetti," Sanders went on, "and do
your wickedness for secret reasons, must I not discover what is that
secret, lest it mean that I lose my hold upon the lands I govern?"

"Lord, that is also true," said Wafa.

"For what is one life more or less," asked Sanders, "a suffering smaller
or greater by the side of my millions and their good?"

"Lord, you are Suliman," said Wafa eagerly. "Therefore, if you let me
go, who shall be the worse for it?"

Again Sanders smiled, that grim parting of lip to show his white teeth.
"Yet you may lie, and, if I let you go, I have neither the truth nor
your body. No, Wafa, you shall speak." He rose up from his chair.
"To-day you shall go to the Village of Irons," he said; "to-morrow I
will come to you, and you shall answer my questions. And, if you will
not speak, I shall light a little fire on your chest, and that fire
shall not go out except when the breath goes from your body. This
palaver is finished."

So they took Wafa away to the Village of Irons, where the evil men of
the Territories worked with chains about their ankles for their many
sins, and in the morning came Sanders.

"Speak, man," he said.

Wafa stared with an effort of defiance, but his face was twitching, for
he saw the soldiers driving pegs into the ground, preparatory to staking
him out. "I will speak the truth," he said.

So they took him into a hut, and there Sanders sat with him alone for
half an hour; and when the Commissioner came out, his face was drawn and
grey. He beckoned to Hamilton, who came forward and saluted. "We will
get back to headquarters," he said shortly, and they arrived two hours
later.

Sanders sat in the little telegraph office, and the Morse sounder
rattled and clacked for half an hour. Other sounders were at work
elsewhere, delicate needles vacillated in cable offices, and an
Under-Secretary was brought from the House of Commons to the bureau of
the Prime Minister to answer a question.

At four o'clock in the afternoon came the message Sanders expected:
"London says permit for Corklan forged. Arrest. Take extremest steps.
Deal drastically, ruthlessly. Holding in residence three companies
African Rifles and mountain battery support you. Good luck.
Administration."

Sanders came out of the office, and Bones me