oiled waters,
but they had not warned him against veiled women and the resentments
of outraged lords and masters.

He thought of his mother's consternation and dismay. He thought of
his father's stern amazement.... What an awful jolt it would give
them, he reflected, with an irrational tickling of young humor.

But no, it would not. They would never know. Not a word of this fate
would percolate into the world without. Not a comment upon his true
end would enliven the daily columns of the East Middleton
_Monitor_. Never would it regret the tragic and romantic interment
of a young native son of talent, buried alive by a revengeful
general of the Sultan....

He amused himself by writing the paragraph that would never be
written. Then he told himself that he was lightheaded and hysterical
and that he had better wonder what would actually be written. What
explanation would be found?

A desert storm perhaps, or some accident. McLean would poke
about--but for all McLean knew he might be on his way back to camp
that very moment. And sometimes he went by sailing canoe, and a
rented horse, and sometimes by the accredited steamer and a camel,
and sometimes by tram or train to the nearest station. Even McLean's
mind and McLean's Copts wouldn't make much of all the alternatives
that his unsettled habits had afforded.

Was there any possibility of his being traced, of any rescue
reaching him? He thought hard and long upon his last free moments.
Jinny Jeffries knew that he was in the palace, and Jinny had been
reiteratedly warned about the danger of betraying that knowledge. It
would take some little time for alarm before Jinny said anything.
And it would take a little time for Jinny to begin to worry.

He had not been so instant in attendance upon Jinny of late, for all
their residence in the same hotel, that she would suspect that his
absence of twenty-four hours was due to actual incarceration.

His cursed passion for freedom in which to ramble up and down that
deserted lane without Tewfick Pasha's garden! His inane love of
solitary mooning....

No, Jinny would not soon wonder about him. She had not expected to
see him that evening, anyway--he had muttered something to her about
a man and an engagement.

She _would_ rather look to see him the next day and talk about their
adventure.... But still she would feel no more than pique at his
absence; positive worry would not develop until later.

Besides, all the revelation