nd to that tomb, a conspicuous
object in the flat desert, with its white dome silhouetted against the
deep blue sky, devout pilgrims would travel, for many generations.

Michael had not attended the funeral. He had consulted Abdul and they
had come to the conclusion that it would be wiser for him, as a
professing Christian, not to be present at the actual religious
ceremony. From a raised spot in the desert he had seen all that had
taken place. In accordance with Moslem superstition, the funeral had
been before sunset. All Moslems dislike a dead body remaining in the
house overnight; it is always, when circumstances permit, buried in the
evening of the day on which death has taken place.

Abdul had told Michael that the dead man would, in all probability,
guide the bearers to the exact spot where they were to bury him; if
they were going in the wrong direction he would impel them to stop.
Michael had watched with interest to see if this would take place, if
the bearers halted or altered their course. Evidently the saint was
pleased with the spot they had selected, for they journeyed on
unhaltingly until they were lost to sight.

And now the little procession was returning, in the fading sunlight.
The holy man's emaciated frame, enclosed in its white bag, lay under
the golden sand of the eastern desert.

This desert burial seemed to Michael a very simple and beautiful method
of disposing of the dead. The dull chanting of the mourners had lent
an emotional note to the scene. It was a sad little incident, but one
totally free from the ordinary melancholy which attends a Western
burial. For a Moslem, death has little horror. A pilgrim in the
desert, when he knows that his death is approaching, either from
fatigue or exhaustion or some disease, will dig his own grave and lay
himself down in it, covering his body up to his neck with sand. There
he will quietly, with Eastern philosophy, await his end. He knows that
the four winds will bring drifting sand to the spot where his body
lies; it will gather and gather, as it does against any excrescence,
until his body is well covered. In the desert many are the ships that
pass in the night.

The saint had been in Michael's camp for a fortnight and during that
time no other member of the party had developed smallpox. Michael was
in blissful ignorance of the fact that the servant whom he had sent
back to Freddy Lampton's hut in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings,