peck in
the blue, the forerunner--if Matthews had only seen it--of the more epic
adventure into which he was so quickly to be caught.

At Shuster he broke his journey. There were still thirty miles to do,
and fresh horses were to be hired--of some fasting _charvadar_ who would
never consent in Ramazan, Matthews very well knew, to start for
Meidan-i-Naft under the terrific August sun. But he was not ungrateful
for a chance to rest. He discovered in himself, too, a sudden interest
in all the trickle of the telegraph. And he was anxious to pick up what
news he could from the few Europeans in the town. Moreover, he needed to
see Ganz about the replenishing of his money-bag; for not the lightest
item of the traveler's pack in Persia is his load of silver _krans_.

At the telegraph office Matthews ran into Ganz himself. The Swiss was a
short, fair, faded man, not too neat about his white clothes, with a
pensive mustache and an ambiguous blue eye that lighted at sight of the
young Englishman. The light, however, was not one to illuminate
Matthews' darkness in the matter of news. What news trickled out of the
local wire was very meager indeed. The Austrians were shelling Belgrade,
the Germans, the Russians, and the French had gone in. That was all. No,
not quite all; for the bank-rate in England had suddenly jumped
sky-high--higher, at any rate, than it had ever jumped before. And even
Shuster felt the distant commotion, in that the bazaar had already seen
fit to put up the price of sugar and petroleum. Not that Shuster showed
any outward sign of commotion as the two threaded their way toward
Ganz's house. The deserted streets reminded Matthews strangely of
Dizful. What was stranger was to find how they reminded him of a chapter
that is closed. He hardly noticed the blank walls, the archways of brick
and tile, the tall _badgirs_, even the filth and smells. But strangest
was it to listen to the hot silence, to look up at the brilliant stripe
of blue between the adobe walls, while over there--!

The portentous uncertainty of what might be over there made his answers
to Ganz's questions about his journey curt and abstracted. He gave no
explanation of his failure to see the celebration at Bala Bala and the
ruins of Susa, which Ganz supposed to be the chief objects of his
excursion. Yet he found himself looking with a new eye at the anomalous
exile whom the Father of Swords called the prince among the merchants of
Shuster, noting