uch afraid of scorpions, which cause
many deaths in the Sahara.

"What is this?" cried Halima. "How can the scorpions speak for thee?"

"They shall speak well," said Ben-Abid. "Their voices cannot lie. Sleep
to-night in thy room with these my brothers. Irena and Boria, the Golden
Date and the Lotus Flower, shall watch beside thee. Guard in thy hand,
or in thy breast, the hedgehog's foot that thou sayest can preserve
from every ill. If, in the evening of to-morrow, thou dancest before the
soldiers, I will give thee fifty golden coins. But, if thou dancest not,
the city shall know whether Ben-Abid is a truth-teller, and whether the
blessings of the great marabout can rest upon such a woman as thou art.
If thou refusest thou art afraid, and thy fear proveth that thou hast no
faith in the magic treasure that dangles at thy girdle."

There was a moment of deep silence. Then, from the crowd burst forth the
cry of many voices:

"Put it to the proof! Ben-Abid speaks well. Put it to the proof, and may
Allah judge between them."

Beneath the caked pigments on her face Halima had gone pale.

"I will not," she began.

But the cries rose up again, and with them the shrill, twittering
laughter of her envious rivals.

"She has no faith in the marabout!" squawked one, who had a nose like an
eagle's beak.

"She is a liar!" piped another, shaking out her silken petticoats as a
bird shakes out its plumes.

And then the twitter of fierce laughter rose, shriek on shriek, and was
echoed more deeply by the crowd of watching men.

"Give me the scorpions!" cried Halima passionately. "I am not afraid!"

Her desert blood was up. Her fatalism--even in the women of the Sahara
it lurks--was awake. In that moment she was ready to die, to silence
the bitter laughter of her rivals. It sank away as Sadok grasped the
scorpions in his filthy claw, and leaped, gibbering in his beard, upon
the terrace.

"Wait!" cried Halima, as he came upon her, holding forth his handful of
writhing poison.

Her bosom heaved. Her lustrous eyes, heavy with kohl, shone like those
of a beast at bay.

Sadok stood still, with his naked arm outstretched.

"How shall I know that the son of a scorpion will pay me the fifty
golden coins? He is poor, though he speaks bravely. He is but a singer
in the cafe of the smokers of the hashish, and cannot buy even a new
garment for the close of the feast of Ramadan. How, then, shall I know
that the gold will hang from my