bel of voices inside, followed by sudden silence.
Anazeh made a sign to Mahommed ben Hamza and me. We all three
laid our shoulders against the door and shoved hard. Evidently
that was not expected; it swung back so suddenly that we were
hard put to it to keep our feet. The man who had opened the door
lay prone on the floor in front of us with his legs in the air,
and Anazeh laughed at him--the bitterest sign of disrespect one
Arab can pay to another.

"Since when does the word of a Damascene exclude an honourable
sheikh from a mejlis in El-Kerak?" asked Anazeh, standing in
the doorway.

He was in no hurry to enter. The dramatic old ruffian understood
too well the value of the impression he made standing there. The
room was crowded with about eighty men, seated on mats and
cushions, with a piece of carpeted floor left unoccupied all down
the centre--a high-walled room with beautifully vaulted ceiling,
and a mullioned window from which most of the glass was gone.
The walls were partly covered with Persian and other mats, but
there was almost no furniture other than water-pipes and little
inlaid tables on which to rest coffee-cups and matches. The air
was thick with smoke already, and the draft from the broken
windows wafted it about in streaky clouds.

Every face in the room was turned toward Anazeh. I kept as much
as possible behind him, for you can't look dignified in that
setting if all you have on is a stained golf suit, that you have
slept in. It seemed all right to me to let the old sheikh have
all the limelight.

But he knew better. Perhaps my erstwhile host ben Nazir had
understood a little German after all. More likely he had divined
Abdul Ali's purpose to make use of me. Certainly he had poured
the proper poison in Anazeh's ear, and the old man understood my
value to a nicety.

He took me by the arm and led me in, Mahommed ben Hamza following
like a dog that was too busy wagging its tail to walk straight.
You would have thought Anazeh and I were father and son by
the way he leaned toward me and found a way for me among the
crowded cushions.

He had no meek notions about choosing a low place. Expecting to
be taken at his own valuation, he chose a high place to begin
with. There were several unoccupied cushions near the door, and
there were half-a-dozen servants busy in a corner with coffee-
pots and cakes. He prodded one of the servants and ordered him
to take two cushions to a place he