any over attention was paid them. Suddenly a hook-nosed
Asiatic gentleman emerged through the once-was gateway--a picture of
a Bible shepherd but for the long-barreled gun he carried instead of
crook--a brown shadow against brown masonry. He challenged them in
Arabic, and Curley Crothers answered him in Queen Victoria's English
that all was well.

"Everything in the garden's lovely!" he asserted, in a deep-sea
sing-song. "How's yourself?"

The man repeated whatever he had said before, this time with a gesture
of impatience.

"Friend!" roared Byng and Curley both together. And the bull terrier
took the joint yell for a war cry, or a bunting call, or possibly the
herald's overture that summons bull pups to Valhalla. He was bred right
and British Navy trained and his was not to reason why. He waited for
no second invitation, but lit out from Byng's arms like a streak--a
whip-tail, snow-white streak--for where the Arab's hard lean legs shone
shiny-brown below his fluttering brown raiment.

"Come back, there!" yelled both keepers in excited unison, but they
called too late.

Each grabbed for the chain too late. Their heads and shoulders cannoned
and they fell together on the hot, dirty sand while Scamp and the Arab
made each other's intimate acquaintance in a whirl of ripping cloth and
legs and teeth and blasphemy.

That in itself was bad enough, and good enough excuse if such were
wanted for war between the Shadow of God Upon Earth and England's
distant Queen; but there was worse to follow.

One does not laugh, between certain parallels, unless the ultimate
degree of insult is intended. And Curley Crothers and Joe Byng did
laugh. They held their ribs and laughed until their muscles ached and
their strong men's strength oozed out of them.

They were laughing when they grabbed the dog at last and pulled him off.
They laughed as they set the Arab on his feet and gave him back his gun;
and they laughed at him with Christian and mannerly good grace when he
spat at them in awful frenzy until the spittle matted in his beard.
And, being gentlemen after a fashion quite their own, they smilingly
apologized.

Arabia lies in the middle of the zone where laughter is not wisdom.
And a smile lies midway in the measure of a laugh. A laugh might be
unintentional. A smile must be deliberate. And the Arab's spittle was
run dry. Creed, custom, law of tooth for tooth and the thought of half
a hundred co-religionists all watching hi