nless your Honour wishes to be cheated.'

'What is your opinion?' I inquired of Suleyman.

'The land is good, and capable of much improvement,' he replied, 'and
all the trees go with it, which is an advantage. Also the source of
water will be all our own.'

Suleyman repeated this remark in presence of the crowd of villagers
whom we found awaiting our return before my house. At once there rose
a cry: 'That Yusuf is a liar. Some of the trees do not belong to him.
The water, too, does not originate upon his property, but on the hill
above, so can be cut from him.'

Suleyman was talking with the village headman. When he returned to me
his face was grave.

'What is it?' I inquired. 'Has the Sheykh Yusuf been deceiving us?'

He shook his head with a disgusted frown before replying:

'No, it is these others who are lying through dislike of him. Is your
heart set upon the purchase of that land?'

'By no means.'

'That is good; because this village is a nest of hornets. The headman
has long marked that land out for his own. Were we to pay Sheykh Yusuf
a good price for it, enabling him to leave the neighbourhood with
honour, they would hate us and work for our discomfort in a multitude
of little ways. We will call upon the Sheykh to-morrow and cry off the
bargain, because your Honour caught a touch of fever from the land
to-day. That is a fair excuse.'

We proffered it upon the morrow, when the Sheykh Yusuf received it
with a scarce veiled sneer, seeming extremely mortified. Directly
after we had left him, we heard later, he went down to the tavern by
the village spring and cursed the elders who had turned my mind
against him in unmeasured terms; annoying people so that they
determined there and then to make an end of him.

Next morning, when we started on our homeward way, there was a noise
of firing in the village, and, coming round a shoulder of the hill in
single file we saw Sheykh Yusuf seated on a chair against the wall of
his house, and screened by a great olive tree, the slits in whose old
trunk made perfect loopholes, blazing away at a large crowd of hostile
fellahin. He used, in turn, three rifles, which his sons kept loading
for him. He was seated, as we afterwards found out, because he had
been shot in the leg.

I was for dashing to his rescue, and Rashid was following. We should
both have lost our lives, most probably, if Suleyman had not shouted
at that moment, in stentorian tones: 'Desist, in the nam