y all awoken and they came out of their huts and they
reviled at me for disturbing them as they slept themselfs so happily.
Then I spake much to them. And all the time I teared with my eyes and
moaned aloudly.

"But," put in Kirby, "I don't see what this--"

"In a presently you shall, howadji. Yesterday I begot your goat. To-day
I shall make you to frisk with peacefulness of heart. Those fellaheen
cannot read. They are not of an education, as I am. And they know my
wiseness in reading. For over than a trillion times I have told them.
And they believe. Pictures also they believe. Just as men of an
education believe the printed word; knowing full well it could not be
printed if it were not Allah's own truth. Well, these folk believe a
picture, if it be in a book. So I showed them pictures. And I read the
law which was beneath the pictures. They heard me read. And they saw the
pictures with their own eyesight. So what could they do but believe? And
they did. Behold, howadji!"

Opening the volume with respectful care, Najib thumbed the yellowing
pages. Presently he paused at a picture which represented in glaring
detail a stricken battlefield strewn with dead and dying Orientals of
vivid costume. In the middle distance a regiment of prisoners was being
slaughtered in a singularly bloodthirsty fashion. The caption, above the
cut, read:

_"Destruction of Sennacherib's Assyrian Hosts, by the People of
Israel."_

"While yet they gazed joyingly on this noble picture," remarked Najib,
"I read to them the words of the law about it. I read aloudly, thus:
'This shall be the way of punishing all folk who make strike hereafter
this date.' Then," continued Najib, "I showed to them another pretty and
splendid picture. See!"

_"Martyrdom of John Rogers, His Wife and Their Nine Children."_

"And," proclaimed Najib, "of this sweet portrait I read thus the law:
'So shall the wifes and the offsprungs of all strike-makers be put to
death; and those wicked strike-makers themselfs along with them.' By the
time I had shown them six or fifteen of such pictures and read them the
law for each of them, those miserable fellaheen and guards were
beweeping themselfs harder and louder and sadder than I had seemed to.
Why, howadji, it was with a difficultness that I kept them from running
away and enhiding themselfs in the mountains, lest the soldiers of the
pasha come upon them at once and punish them for trying to make strike!
But I said I wou