ces, testified to the Unity of Allah and was content to
pray for better luck, until news was brought to him that most of the sheep
reported dead were to be seen in the Friday market fetching good prices.
The news proved true, the report of their death was no more than the
defendant's intelligent anticipation of events, and the action arose
out of it. To be sure, the plaintiff had presented a fine sheep to the
Basha, but the defendant was a French subject by protection, and the
Vice-Consul of his adopted nation was there to see fair play. Under these
circumstances the defendant lied with an assurance that must have helped
to convince himself; his friends arrived in the full number required by
the law, and testified with cheerful mendacity in their companion's
favour. The Basha listened with attention while the litigants swore
strange oaths and abused each other very thoroughly. Then he silenced both
parties with a word, and gave judgment for the defendant. There was no
appeal, though, had the defendant been an unprotected subject, the
plaintiff's knife had assuredly entered into the final settlement of this
little matter. But the plaintiff knew that an attack upon a French protege
would lead to his own indefinite imprisonment and occasional torture, to
the confiscation of his goods, and to sundry other penalties that may be
left unrecorded, as they would not look well in cold print. He knew,
moreover, that everything is predestined, that no man may avoid Allah's
decree. These matters of faith are real, not pale abstractions, in
Morocco. So he was less discontented with the decision than one of his
European brethren would have been in similar case--and far more
philosophic regarding it.

[Illustration: EVENING, MAZAGAN]

Quite slowly we completed our outfit for the inland journey. Heaven aid
the misguided Nazarene who seeks to accomplish such matters swiftly in
this land of eternal afternoon. I bought an extraordinary assortment of
what our American friends call "dry-goods" in the Jewish stores, from the
very business-like gentlemen in charge of them. These all wore black
gaberdines, black slippers, stockings that were once white, and black
skull-caps over suspiciously shining love-locks. Most of the Jewish men
seemed to have had smallpox; in their speech they relied upon a very base
Arabic, together with worse Spanish or quite barbarous French. Djedida
having no Mellah, as the Moorish ghetto is called, they were free to