e.'

The cook fell prostrate, then turned over on his back. His mouth hung
open idiotically; his tongue lolled out.

'Now rise and kiss my boot.'

The cook obeyed. By that time there were murmurs of compassion from
the would-be slayers.

'Spake I not truly?' asked Suleyman.

'Aye, O sun of verity! He is quite mad, the poor one,' said the old
man who had acted spokesman. 'It were a sin for us to kill him, being
in that state. His manner at the first deceived us. Allah heal him!
How came the dreadful malady upon him?'

'It came upon him through the pangs of unrequited love.'

'Alas, the poor one! Ah, the misery of men! May Allah heal him!' cried
the women, as the group of villagers moved off, contented. Just when
the last of them passed out of sight the longest tongue I ever saw in
man emerged from the cook's mouth, and the rascal put his finger to
his nose in a derisive gesture. Those portents were succeeded by a
realistic cock-crow.

'What makes the cook like that, devoid of reverence?' I asked of
Suleyman.

'It is because he was born in Jerusalem,' was the astonishing reply.
'He is a Christian, and was born poor; and the quarrels of the
missionaries over him, each striving to obtain his patronage for some
absurd belief, have made him what he is--a kind of atheist.'

Selim, the waiter, who was near and overheard this ending, burst out
laughing.

'An atheist!' he cried. 'Your Honour understands? It means a man who
thinks there is no God. Just like a beetle!' and he held his quaking
sides.

Both he and Suleyman appeared to think that atheism was a subject to
make angels laugh. And yet they were as staunch believers as those
fellahin.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE SELLING OF OUR GUN

I had been ill with typhoid fever. Just before my illness, the son of
a sheykh in our neighbourhood had asked me to lend him my gun for a
few days, since I never used it. There was nothing really which I
cared to shoot. The village people rushed out in pursuit of every
little bird whose tweet was heard, however distant, in the olive
groves or up the mountain side. Jackals there were besides, and an
occasional hyaena; and, in the higher mountains, tigers, so the people
still persisted in declaring, meaning leopards, I suppose, or lynxes;
for ignorant Arabs lump together a whole genus under one specific
name, in the same way that they call all wild plants, which have
neither scent nor market-value, grass. It was after we had