tly in
London, had hair of that shade of rather warm brown.

"He does not look like an Englishman," she said presently.

"He can talk in French and in Arabic, but Hadj says he is English."

"How should Hadj know?"

"Because he has the eyes of the jackal, and has been with many English.
We are getting near to the Catholic church, Madame. You will see it
through the trees. And there is Monsieur the Cure coming towards us. He
is coming from his house, which is near the hotel."

At some distance in the twilight of the tunnel Domini saw a black figure
in a soutane walking very slowly towards them. The stranger, who had
been covering the ground rapidly with his curious, shuffling stride,
was much nearer to it than they were, and, if he kept on at his
present pace, would soon pass it. But suddenly Domini saw him pause and
hesitate. He bent down and seemed to be doing something to his boot.
Hadj dropped the green bag, and was evidently about to kneel down, and
assist him when he lifted himself up abruptly and looked before him, as
if at the priest who was approaching, then turned sharply to the right
into a path which led out of the garden to the arcades of the Rue
Berthe. Hadj followed, gesticulating frantically, and volubly explaining
that the hotel was in the opposite direction. But the stranger did not
stop. He only glanced swiftly back over his shoulder once, and then
continued on his way.

"What a funny man that is!" said Batouch. "What does he want to do?"

Domini did not answer him, for the priest was just passing them, and she
saw the church to the left among the trees. It was a plain, unpretending
building, with a white wooden door set in an arch. Above the arch were
a small cross, two windows with rounded tops, a clock, and a white tower
with a pink roof. She looked at it, and at the priest, whose face was
dark and meditative, with lustrous, but sad, brown eyes. Yet she thought
of the stranger.

Her attention was beginning to be strongly fixed upon the unknown man.
His appearance and manner were so unusual that it was impossible not to
notice him.

"There is the hotel, Madame!" said Batouch.

Domini saw it standing at right angles to the church, facing the
gardens. A little way back from the church was the priest's house, a
white building shaded by date palms and pepper trees. As they drew near
the stranger reappeared under the arcade, above which was the terrace of
the hotel. He vanished through the big