garding your
bona fides. It was no use my saying, as I did repeatedly, that I
personally guarantee you. He asked me how much I know about you.
I had to confess that what I actually know amounts to very
little."

"Well?" I said. "What does the old grouch want?"

"He thinks that you should be presented to the assembled notables
at noon today. In fact, he demands that they should catechize
you regarding your ideas about a school."

"I have no objection."

"But, I am sorry to have to add this: it is probable the
notables will insist on your remaining in El-Kerak until after
that shall have taken place which they have been summoned to
decide on. They will not risk your returning before the--"

"Before what?"

"The--ah--they contemplate a raid!"

"So I'm a prisoner?"

"No, no! Mon dieu, what do you think of me! Even the fanatical
Suliman ben Saoud saw the force of the argument when I spoke of
the sanctity of any guest here on my invitation. But he thinks--
and I agree with him, that as a precaution you should first call
on Sheikh Abdul Ali. You will find him a very agreeable man, who
will receive you with proper courtesy. He is here from Damascus,
and exercises a great influence. Once his mind is at ease about
you, he will satisfy all the others. Are you agreeable?"

"Why not?"

So we smoked a cigarette together after the coffee, and then set
forth on foot, for the distance was not great, preceded and
surrounded by armed retainers. I imagine the armed men were more
for the sake of appearance than protection. Ben Nazir seemed
popular. But the escort drove other pedestrians out of the way
as roughly as they did the unspeakable dogs that infested every
offal-heap. The street that we followed was, of course, the open
sewer for the houses on either hand, and its condition was a
credit to the mangy curs that so resented our intrusion.

Abdul Ali's house, if his it was, was a fairly big square
building near the middle of the town. It did not look unlike one
of the old-time New York precinct stations, with its big windows
protected by iron grilles, and a flight of stone steps leading up
to a door exactly in the middle of the front wall.

There were thirty or forty capable-looking men hanging about the
place. Abdul Ali owned more than one camel caravan, and every
man connected with the business looked on himself as a member of
one big feudal family. They were all armed. Most of them had
modern