hid the scarlet
flush of shame which swept upward across his face. Quickly he turned
and made his way back to camp. The sentry, from his post, saw him
enter his own tent; but he did not see him crawl under the canvas at
the rear and sneak cautiously to the tent which the prisoner had
occupied, where now lay the dead body of Mohammed Beyd.

Raising the lower edge of the rear wall, Werper crept within and
approached the corpse. Without an instant's hesitation he seized the
dead wrists and dragged the body upon its back to the point where he
had just entered. On hands and knees he backed out as he had come in,
drawing the corpse after him. Once outside the Belgian crept to the
side of the tent and surveyed as much of the camp as lay within his
vision--no one was watching.

Returning to the body, he lifted it to his shoulder, and risking all on
a quick sally, ran swiftly across the narrow opening which separated
the prisoner's tent from that of the dead man. Behind the silken wall
he halted and lowered his burden to the ground, and there he remained
motionless for several minutes, listening.

Satisfied, at last, that no one had seen him, he stooped and raised the
bottom of the tent wall, backed in and dragged the thing that had been
Mohammed Beyd after him. To the sleeping rugs of the dead raider he
drew the corpse, then he fumbled about in the darkness until he had
found Mohammed Beyd's revolver. With the weapon in his hand he
returned to the side of the dead man, kneeled beside the bedding, and
inserted his right hand with the weapon beneath the rugs, piled a
number of thicknesses of the closely woven fabric over and about the
revolver with his left hand. Then he pulled the trigger, and at the
same time he coughed.

The muffled report could not have been heard above the sound of his
cough by one directly outside the tent. Werper was satisfied. A grim
smile touched his lips as he withdrew the weapon from the rugs and
placed it carefully in the right hand of the dead man, fixing three of
the fingers around the grip and the index finger inside the trigger
guard.

A moment longer he tarried to rearrange the disordered rugs, and then
he left as he had entered, fastening down the rear wall of the tent as
it had been before he had raised it.

Going to the tent of the prisoner he removed there also the evidence
that someone might have come or gone beneath the rear wall. Then he
returned to his own tent, entere