s before his death. He could
hear with extraordinary persistence the cries of "Allah! Allah! There
is no strength nor power but in God. To God we belong, to Him we must
return." The words had never left the desert stillness; the air held
them and repeated them time after time.

He could see Abdul reverently pull the eyelids over the death-glazed
eyes; he could see the weeping mourners perform the last ceremonies for
the dead saint.

Then the scene would change to the one he had watched in the
evening--the white figures, with blue scarves of mourning wound round
their heads, bearing the saint reverently across the golden sands.

How tender it had all been, how vivid the clear, open light of
uninterrupted space and cloudless sky!

And now it was all over. He had met the holy man who was to lead him
to the secret spot where the treasure lay; he had heard from his lips
the account of how he had accidentally come across the crocks of gold,
when he had made for himself a dwelling-place in a cave in the heart of
the hills. The crocks were full of blocks of Nubian gold; the jewels
were in caskets which had fallen to pieces, even before his eyes, when
the winds of the desert had reached them.

Was it all a wonderful dream? Had he really in his possession the
crimson amethyst, of Oriental beauty, which the saint had carried in
his ear? Was it locked in the belt-purse which he wore under his
clothes by day and laid under his pillow by night? He put his hand
below his pillow and opened the purse; no doubt his fingers would feel
the jewel. But what was there to tell him that it was really there,
that he was not the victim of some strange hallucination? Thoughts
were things. Had he thought about this treasure until it had become to
him an actual reality?

Then vision after vision was forced upon his sight--Millicent in her
varying moods, the saint's ecstasies, the now familiar figures of the
Bedouin, bearing their offerings to the sick man, their polite and
beautiful expressions as they laid the eggs and milk at his feet. He
got so tired of the visualizing and recitation of all that he had seen
and heard during the days which he had spent in anxious uncertainty
that he could endure it no longer.

He got up and lit his candle; things would seem more real in the light.
He stretched out his hand for the book which always lay near his bed.
The Open Road, his Bible and this little volume of selected verse
constitute