s a lawyer to court, sure of a fee if
his client wins, yet sure, too, of a fee if his client loses,
enjoying profit and entertainment in any event. Yet who shall blame
Tugendheim? Unlike a lawyer, he stood to take the consequences if
both forks of the stick should fail. I told Ranjoor Singh all that
Tugendheim and the Turk were saying to the men, and his brow
darkened, although he made no comment. He did not trust me yet any
more than he felt compelled to.

"Send Abraham to me," he said at last. So I went and sent Abraham,
feeling jealous that the Syrian should hear what I might not.

Ranjoor Singh had been forcing the pace, and by the time I speak of
now we had nearly crossed that desert, for a rim of hills was in
front of us and all about. It was not true desert, such as we have
in our Punjab, but a great plain already showing promise of the
spring, with the buds of countless flowers getting ready to burst
open; when we lay at rest it amused us to pluck them and try to
determine what they would look like when their time should come. And
besides flowers there were roots, remarkably good to eat, that the
Syrians called "daughters of thunder," saying that was the local
name. Tugendheim called them truffles. A little water and that
desert would be fertile farm-land, or I never saw corn grow!

Ranjoor Singh conversed with Abraham until we entered a defile
between the hills; and that night we camped in a little valley with
our outposts in a ring around us, Ranjoor Singh sitting by a bright
fire half-way up the side of a slope where he could overlook us all
and be alone. We had seen mounted men two or three times that day,
they mistaking us perhaps for Turkish troops, for they vanished
after the first glimpse. Nevertheless, we tethered our horses close
in the valley bottom, and lay around them, ready for all
contingencies.

I remember that night well, for it was the first since we started
eastward in the least to resemble our Indian nights. It made us feel
homesick, and some of the men were crooning love-songs. The stars
swung low, looking as if a man could almost reach them, and the
smoke of our fires hung sweet on the night air. I was listening to
Abraham's tales about Turks--tales to make a man bite his beard--when
Ranjoor Singh called me in a voice that carried far without
making much noise. (I have never known him to raise his voice so
high or loud that it lost dignity.) "Hira Singh!" he called, and I
answered "Ha