en when two factions quarrel for unlawful cause--it
may be over stolen gains, or for some deadly wrong which cannot be
avowed without dishonour--and when each side exterminates the other.'

'How can that happen?' I exclaimed again.

Rashid could not at once reply, because in our avoidance of those
human relics we found ourselves on broken ground and among trunks of
trees, which called for the address of all our wits. But when the
horses once more plodded steadily, he assured me that the thing could
happen, and had happened often in that country, where men's blood is
hot. He told me how a band of brigands once, in Anti-Lebanon, had
fought over their spoils till the majority on both sides had been
slain, and the survivors were so badly wounded that they could not
move, but lay and died upon the battlefield; and how the people of two
villages, both men and women, being mad with envy, had held a battle
with the same result. I interrupted him with questions. Both of us
were glad to talk in order to get rid of the remembrance of our former
fear. We gave the rein to our imaginations, speaking eagerly.

Reverting to the severed limbs which we had seen, Rashid exclaimed:

'Now I will tell your Honour how it happened. A deadly insult had been
offered to a family in a young girl's dishonour. Her father and her
brothers killed her to wipe out the shame--as is the custom here among
the fellahin--and then with all their relatives waylaid the men of the
insulter's house when these were cutting wood here in the forest.
There was a furious battle, lasting many hours. The combatants fought
hand-to-hand with rustic weapons, and in some cases tore each other
limb from limb. When all was done, the victors were themselves so
sorely wounded that they were able to do nothing but lie down and
die.'

'How many do you think there were?' I asked, believing.

'To judge by scent alone, not one or two; but, Allah knows, perhaps a
hundred!' said Rashid reflectively.

'It is strange they should have lain there undiscovered.'

'Not strange, when one remembers that the spot is far from any village
and probably as far from the right road,' was his reply.

This last conjecture was disquieting; but we were both too much
excited for anxiety.

'It is an event to be set down in histories,' Rashid exclaimed. 'We
shall be famous people when we reach the village. Such news is heard
but once in every hundred years.'

'I wish that we could reach that v