I was myself again, and
felt a sharp blow from my own familiar conscience when I found myself
smiling with vengeful satisfaction at certain movements of my sleeping
friend that made it apparent he was being visited by certain inhabitants
of the night that find their way to Bedawin tents as well as peasants'
huts. He had been almost untouched when I suffered so at Jenin; and I
found my confidence increased in the law of compensation as I watched
his struggles, wholly unscathed myself.

Our next day's work was the longest and hardest we had yet had. We were
to crowd two days into one. We were well on our way before it was fairly
light. We crossed the Jordan on a little stone bridge, and rode straight
over the plain to Banias, the Caesarea Philippi of apostolic times. We
left our horses in the little village near which the Jordan comes
pouring out of a rocky opening in the hills, and, with an Arab boy,
hurried at our best pace up the mountain to the magnificent ruins of a
mediaeval castle, the finest of its class in the Holy Land. Our Kurd and
muleteer were waiting for us as we came down the hill like veritable
mountain-goats, and the latter pointed triumphantly to something wrapped
in an Arab newspaper under his arm. As soon as we were out of sight of
the village he stopped and displayed his prize: it was a chicken, cooked
in some unknown but most savory way. It was long since we had eaten
anything of the sort, and, leaping to the ground, with the help of a
clasp-knife bought in Nablous, the only eating-utensil our party could
boast, we bisected our dinner, and, sitting under a gray old gnarled
olive, ate it with such expressions of satisfaction as would not be
honest, even if allowable, at the grandest civilized banquets.

We sprang again into our saddles, crossed again the plain and the bridge
over the Jordan, and pushed over the hills toward Deir Mimas. Our horses
were used up even more completely than ourselves; and when the Kurd lost
the way, and took us a long and unnecessary _detour_, we felt it so
keenly that we said nothing. It was long after nightfall when we
dismounted at the door of a native Christian preacher's house at Deir
Mimas. But the struggles of the day were not ended. The Kurd stalked in,
and, saying that here his duties ended, demanded a sum at least a third
greater than that agreed upon. We fought him with everything but
weapons, and, when we separated, the Kurd's pockets were heavier and his
heart