ter did he
appear one of life's commonplaces. Lean, brown, dry, with a hawk-nose
and glinting eyes, surely he had come from far, strange places.

"Rrisa!" the Master spoke sharply, flinging the man's name at him with
the exasperation of overtensed nerves.

"_M'alme?_" (Master?) replied the other.

"Bring the evening food and drink," commanded the Master, in excellent
Arabic, guttural and elusive with strange hiatuses of breath.

Rrisa withdrew, salaaming. His master turned toward the western
windows. There the white blankness of the map of Arabia seemed mocking
him. The Master's eyes grew hard; he raised his fist against the map,
and smote it hard. Then once more he fell to pacing; and as he walked
that weary space, up and down, he muttered to himself with words we
cannot understand.

After a certain time, Rrisa came silently back, sliding into the soft
dusk of that room almost like a wraith. He bore a silver tray with a
hook-nosed coffee-pot of chased metal. The cover of this coffee-pot
rose into a tall, minaret-like spike. On the tray stood also a small
cup having no handle; a dish of dates; a few wafers made of the
Arabian cereal called _temmin_; and a little bowl of _khat_ leaves.

"_M'alme, al khat aja_" (the khat has come), said Rrisa.

He placed the tray on the table at his master's side, and was about to
withdraw when the other stayed him with raised hand.

"Tell me, Rrisa," he commanded, still speaking in Arabic, "where wert
thou born? Show thou me, on that map."

The Arab hesitated a moment, squinting by the dim light that now had
faded to purple dusk. Then he advanced a thin forefinger, and laid
it on a spot that might have indicated perhaps three hundred miles
southeast of Mecca. No name was written on the map, there.

"How dost thou name that place, Rrisa?" demanded the Master.

"I cannot say, Master," answered the Arab, very gravely. As he stood
there facing the western afterglow, the profound impassivity of his
expression--a look that seemed to scorn all this infidel civilization
of an upstart race--grew deeper.

To nothing of it all did he owe allegiance, save to the Master
himself--the Master who had saved him in the thick of the Gallipoli
inferno. Captured by the Turks there, certain death had awaited him
and shameful death, as a rebel against the Sublime Porte. The Master
had rescued him, and taken thereby a scar that would go with him to
the grave; but that, now, does not concern our