ented effectively. The spurs of the Atlas were still
clearly visible on our left hand, and needless to say we had the place to
ourselves. There was not so much as a tent in sight.

At last M'Barak, who had resumed his place at the head of our little
company, and now realised that we had prolonged our stay beyond proper
limits, mounted his horse rather ostentatiously, and the journey was
resumed over level land that was very scantily covered with grass or
clumps of irises. The mountains seemed to recede and the plain to spread
out; neither eye nor glass revealed a village; we were apparently riding
towards the edge of the plains. The muleteer and his companions strode
along at a round pace, supporting themselves with sticks and singing
melancholy Shilha love-songs. Their mules, recollection of their good meal
of the previous evening being forgotten, dropped to a pace of something
less than four miles an hour, and as the gait of our company had to be
regulated by the speed of its slowest member, it is not surprising that
night caught us up on the open and shut out a view of the billowy plain
that seemingly held no resting-place. How I missed the little Maalem,
whose tongue would have been a spur to the stumbling beasts! But as
wishing would bring nothing, we dismounted and walked by the side of our
animals, the kaid alone remaining in the saddle. Six o'clock became seven,
and seven became eight, and then I found it sweet to hear the watch-dog's
honest bark. Of course it was not a "deep-mouthed welcome:" it was no more
than a cry of warning and defiance raised by the colony of pariah dogs
that guarded Ain el Baidah, our destination.

In the darkness, that had a pleasing touch of purple colouring lent it by
the stars, Ain el Baidah's headman loomed very large and imposing. "Praise
to Allah that you have come and in health," he remarked, as though we
were old friends. He assured me of my welcome, and said his village had a
guest-house that would serve instead of the tent. Methought he protested
too much, but knowing that men and mules were dead beat, and that we had a
long way to go, I told Salam that the guest-house would serve, and the
headman lead the way to a tapia building that would be called a very small
barn, or a large fowl-house, in England. A tiny clay lamp, in which a
cotton wick consumed some mutton fat, revealed a corner of the darkness
and the dirt, and when our own lamps banished the one, they left the other