t and apt to comprehend his employer's desires, and that he
did so now was shown at the first start.

"Which way am I going, Ben Eddin?" he said quietly. "Through the better
parts of the city, where the wealthier people are, who keep slaves," and
in a few minutes Frank was gazing about him with horror as he asked
himself what must the worst parts of the place be if these were the
best. For eyes and nostrils were disgusted at every turn. The heat was
intense, and wherever any creature died or the offal of the inhabitants'
food was cast out into the narrow ways, there it festered and rotted
beneath the torrid rays of the sun, while myriads of loathsome flies,
really a blessing to the place in their natural duty of scavengers, rose
in clouds, and to hurry from one plague was only to rush into another.

Misery, neglect, and wretchedness appeared on every hand; but the
population swarmed, and habit seemed to have hardened them to the power
of existing where it appeared to be a certainty that some pestilence
must rise and sweep them off.

Frank was not long in discriminating between the free and the enslaved.
Those swarthy, black often and shining, sauntering about well-armed, and
with a haughty, insolent bearing and stare at the mounted party; these
dull of eye and skin, cringing, dejected, half naked, and often
displaying the marks of the brutality of their conquerors, as they bent
under heavy loads or passed on with the roughest of agricultural
implements to and from the outskirts of the town.

"Plenty of slaves, Ben Eddin," said the Sheikh gravely. "Poor wretches,
swept in from the villages to grow the Baggara's corn and draw and carry
their water. They spare their camels to make these people bear the
loads. Plenty of slaves. Look!"

Frank's eyes were already noting that to which the Sheikh drew his
attention, for a party of about a dozen unhappy fellaheen, joined
together by a long chain, which in several cases had fretted their black
skins into open sores, were being driven along by a Baggara mounted upon
a slight, swift-looking camel, from whose high back he wielded a
long-lashed whip, and flicked with it from time to time at the bare skin
of one of the slaves who cringed along looking ready to drop.

They were on in front, stopping the way in the narrow street between two
rows of mud-brick houses, and consequently Frank's party had to slacken
their pace, the driver having glanced insolently back at them an