arkle and gaiety and charm. They were two children in a
world of enchantment. Nothing could have been more fantastic than
that day.

Sometimes they rode low on paths between green _dhurra_ fields,
sometimes they rode high along the Nile embankment, watching the
blue waters alive with winged fleet, black buffaloes splashing in
shallows under charge of little bronze babies of boys, watching all
the scenes about them shift and change with magic mutability.

They lunched beside an old well, they dined by the river bank, and
then as the velvet shadows deepened in the folds of the Arabian
mountains across the river and the first stars pricked through the
lilac sky above them, they pressed on hurriedly into the southwest
that glowed like molten gold behind the black bars of the palms....
And by and by when even the after-glow had ceased to incarnadine the
far horizon and the path was too black and strange for them, they
turned off across the fertile valley into the edging desert again
and saw the new moon rise like an arrow of fire over the rim of the
world and pour forth a golden flood that lightened the way yet
farther south for their tired beasts.

Arlee rode like a fairy princess of mystery, the silver shawl which
they had bought at a village to shield her from the sun, drooping in
heavy folds from her head, its metal threads glimmering in the moon
rays.... Her eyes were solemn with the beauty and the wonder, of
the night, and the strange solitude and isolation; her look was
ethereal to Billy and mystically lovely.

But Girgeh seemed to retreat farther and farther into the unknown
south, and at last it was no fairy princess but only a very tired
girl who slid stiffly down from the saddle, and pillowed a heavy
head on Billy's coat. And it was a very tired young man who lay
beside her, listening to the deep breathing of the beasts and the
faint breath that rose rhythmically beside him. Yet for a time he
did not sleep. His heart was full of the awe and mystery of the
moonlit world about him--and the awe and mystery of that little bit
of the living world curled there so intimately in the dark....

With a reverent hand he drew the wraps he had purchased closer over
her. The night was growing cold. Far off the jackals howled.... With
his gun at hand he slept at last, and slept sound, though sand is
the hardest mattress in the world and a camel's back not the softest
pillow....

CHAPTER XIX

THE PURSUIT

"But