to its heritage.

I sat on the edge of an old stone well before the Bordj, while Safti
smoked his keef. Near midnight, quivering across the sands, came
the faint sound of a flute moving from the village towards the deep
obscurity of the palm gardens. I knew that air, those trills, those
little runs, those grace notes.

"It is Smain," I said to Safti.

"Yes, Sidi. He will play all night alone among the palms. He is in
love."

"But with Oreida! Is it possible?"

"Did he not say that she was like the first day after the fast of
Ramadan? When an African says that his heart is big with love."

The flute went on and on, and I said to myself and to the moon, as I had
often said before:

"He that is born in the Sahara is an impenetrable mystery."

SAFTI'S SUMMER DAY.

By Robert Hichens

Safti is a respectable, one-eyed married man who lives in a brown earth
house in the Sahara Desert. He has a wife and five children, and in
winter he works for his living and theirs. When the morning dawns, and
the great red sun rises above the rim of the wide and wonderful land
which is the only land that Safti knows, he wraps his white burnous
around him, pulls his hood up over his closely-shaven head, rolls and
lights his cigarette, and sets forth to his equivalent of an office.
This is the white arcade of a hotel where unbelieving dogs of travellers
come in winter. I am an unbelieving dog of a traveller, and I come
there in winter, and Safti comes there for me. I, in fact, am Safti's
profession. Byrne, and others like me, he lives. For a consideration
he shows me round the market, which I knew by heart six years ago, and
takes me up the mosque tower, from which I gazed over the flying pigeons
and the swaying palms when Safti was comparatively young and frisky.
Together we visit the gazelles in their pretty garden, and the Caid's
Mill, from which one sees the pink and purple mountains of the Aures. We
ride to the Sulphur Baths, we drive to Sidi-Okba. We take our _dejeuner_
out to the yellow sand dunes, and we sip our coffee among the keef
smokers in Hadj's painted cafe. We listen to the songs of the negro
troubadour, and we smile at Algia's dancing when the silver moon comes
up and the Kabyle dogs round the nomads' tents begin their serenades.
And then I give Safti five francs and my blessing, and he bids me
"_Bonne nuit!_" and his ghostly figure is lost in the black shadows of
the palm-trees.

Oh, Safti works hard,