never discuss my
affairs--we have never even talked of them together."

Abdul salaamed. "My master's secrets are his servant's."

"Then how could he find out?"

"Tents have ears, Effendi. The saint's voice was weak, but not too
weak for the super-ears of a spy. When the saint told the Effendi,
very secretly and minutely, how to find the hidden treasure, on that
night when he knew that Allah had decreed his death, Abdul was also
playing the part of a spy. He saw the servant of the honourable
_Sitt_, he saw his ear, and how it was placed at a little aperture in
the sick man's tent."

Michael was silent for a few seconds.

"_Ma lesh_! The Effendi need not trouble too much. I did not tell
him--there was nothing to be gained by causing my master unhappiness."

"I am not troubling, Abdul. If it has been so willed that I am to
discover Akhnaton's treasure, even the spy of the cleverest woman on
earth will not prevent it. I am fatalist enough for that, Abdul!"

"The Effendi is wise. Avarice destroys what the avaricious gathers.
Allah will reward the spy according to his merits."

Michael smiled. "I'm afraid it is more my nature than my piety which
makes it easy for me to resign myself to the inevitable."

"_Ma lesh_! The Effendi understates his obedience to God's will--there
is much good in patiently tolerating what you dislike."

"There's another way of expressing the same thing, Abdul--Effendi
Lampton calls it 'drifting.' I am too like the desert sands, he
thinks. I am without ambition, I too easily accept what seems to me
the deciding finger of fate."

"Content is prosperity, Effendi."

"And we say that God helps those who help themselves."

"_Aiwah_." Abdul smiled. "Our rendering of the proverb is more
beautiful--'God helps us so long as we help each other.' The Effendi
showed much charity--he helps others rather than himself."

"My help was unworthy of mention, the merest human sympathy for the
helpless and suffering. Who could have done less?"

"We consider sympathy the next best thing to a proper belief in God,
sympathy for others." Abdul bowed. "The Effendi has much sympathy--he
himself is not aware of how much."

"Thank you, Abdul, but I do believe in God. I believe in Him so fully
and unreservedly that I often wonder why I am not a good man.
Sometimes I am not so bad, or I think I am not, for I am very conscious
of Him, He is very near to me. At other times the world is a
wild