nding between
them. These in their turn were topped by higher and more fantastic
hills, and these by others, peeping over each other's shoulders until
they blended with that distant violet haze. None of these hills were of
any height--a few hundred feet at the most--but their savage,
saw-toothed crests, and their steep scarps of sun-baked stone, gave them
a fierce character of their own.

"The Libyan Desert," said the dragoman, with a proud wave of his hand.
"The greatest desert in the world. Suppose you travel right west from
here, and turn neither to the north nor to the south, the first houses
you would come to would be in America. That make you home-sick, Miss
Adams, I believe?"

But the American old maid had her attention drawn away by the conduct of
Sadie, who had caught her arm by one hand and was pointing over the
desert with the other.

"Well, now, if that isn't too picturesque for anything!" she cried, with
a flush of excitement upon her pretty face. "Do look, Mr. Stephens!
That's just the one only thing we wanted to make it just perfectly
grand. See the men upon the camels coming out from between those
hills!"

They all looked at the long string of red-turbaned riders who were
winding out of the ravine, and there fell such a hush that the buzzing
of the flies sounded quite loud upon their ears. Colonel Cochrane had
lit a match, and he stood with it in one hand and the unlit cigarette in
the other until the flame licked round his fingers. Belmont whistled.
The dragoman stood staring with his mouth half-open, and a curious slaty
tint in his full, red lips. The others looked from one to the other
with an uneasy sense that there was something wrong. It was the Colonel
who broke the silence.

"By George, Belmont, I believe the hundred-to-one chance has come off!"
said he.

CHAPTER IV.

"What's the meaning of this, Mansoor?" cried Belmont harshly. "Who are
these people, and why are you standing staring as if you had lost your
senses?"

The dragoman made an effort to compose himself, and licked his dry lips
before he answered.

"I do not know who they are," said he in a quavering voice.

"Who they are?" cried the Frenchman. "You can see who they are.
They are armed men upon camels, Ababdeh, Bishareen--Bedouins, in short,
such as are employed by the Government upon the frontier."

"Be Jove, he may be right, Cochrane," said Belmont, looking inquiringly
at the Colonel. "Why shouldn'