it was, he had set David high
in his esteem at once. This esteem gave greater certainty that any
backsheesh coming from the estate of Benn Claridge would not be sifted
through many hands on its way to himself. Of Benn Claridge Prince Kaid
had scarcely even heard until he died; and, indeed, it was only within
the past few years that the Quaker merchant had extended his business to
Egypt and had made his headquarters at Assiout, up the river.

David's donkey now picked its way carefully through the narrow streets
of the Moosky. Arabs and fellaheen squatting at street corners looked at
him with furtive interest. A foreigner of this character they had never
before seen, with coat buttoned up like an Egyptian official in the
presence of his superior, and this wide, droll hat on his head. David
knew that he ran risks, that his confidence invited the occasional
madness of a fanatical mind, which makes murder of the infidel a
passport to heaven; but as a man he took his chances, and as a Christian
he believed he would suffer no mortal hurt till his appointed time. He
was more Oriental, more fatalist, than he knew. He had also early in his
life learned that an honest smile begets confidence; and his face, grave
and even a little austere in outline, was usually lighted by a smile.

From the Mokattam Hills, where he read Faith's letter again, his back
against one of the forts which Napoleon had built in his Egyptian days,
he scanned the distance. At his feet lay the great mosque, and the
citadel, whose guns controlled the city, could pour into it a lava
stream of shot and shell. The Nile wound its way through the green
plains, stretching as far to the north as eye could see between the opal
and mauve and gold of the Libyan Hills. Far over in the western vista a
long line of trees, twining through an oasis flanking the city, led out
to a point where the desert abruptly raised its hills of yellow sand.
Here, enormous, lonely, and cynical, the pyramids which Cheops had
built, the stone sphinx of Ghizeh, kept faith with the desert in the
glow of rainless land-reminders ever that the East, the mother of
knowledge, will by knowledge prevail; that:

"The thousand years of thy insolence
The thousand years of thy faith,
Will be paid in fiery recompense,
And a thousand years of bitter death."

"The sword--for ever the sword," David said to himself, as he looked:
"Rameses and David and Mahomet and