hlessly pushed away the Moors who
had obtained the best places, pointing at Claire and Renfrew, and wildly
vociferating their mighty rank and enormous wealth. The staring mob gave
way; and in a moment Claire and the miracle man stood face to face. His
frenzied eyes had no sooner seen her than he too fell upon the
surrounding natives, thrusting them violently to one side, and cursing
them for daring to draw near to the great English gentleman and lady. In
the whole mighty mob these two were the only Europeans, and they
attracted as universal an attention as two Aztecs would in a Bank
Holiday gathering at the Crystal Palace. Renfrew could now see that the
screeching music came from one side of the ring, where a couple of men,
clothed in filthy rags, were sitting on the ground, one playing a long
pipe of straw, the other beating an enormous drum. Immediately behind
them a very old man, evidently a maniac, swayed his body violently
backwards and forwards, and at regular intervals uttered a loud and
chuckling cry that might have been the ejaculation of a tipsy
school-boy, and came strangely from withered lips hanging loose with
weakness and with age. This dancing Methuselah caught Renfrew's
attention; and, for the moment, he forgot to look at the miracle man. A
general outcry from the multitude made him turn his head. He saw then
that the miracle man held in his huge hands a sort of kennel of straw,
the mouth of which was closed with a movable flap. Lifting this aloft,
he sprang wildly round the ring, vociferating some words at the top of
his voice; then, suddenly casting it down, he flung himself upon the
ground, which he beat with his forehead, while he shrieked out a prayer
to his patron saint for protection in the great miracle which he was
about to perform.

"What is he doing?" Renfrew asked of Absalem.

"Don't you know?" Claire said.

Her eyes were gleaming with excitement as they stared at the salaaming
figure that grovelled at their feet.

"No. How should I?"

"He is praying to Sidi Mahomet," she said.

And then she looked at Renfrew. He understood. At that moment, despite
the excessive heat engendered by the blazing sun and the pressure of the
crowd, he turned very cold, as if his body was plunged in glacier water.
He thought of the tall figure that had stood before Claire's tent door
in the moonbeams, the lips that had coaxed from the pipe the tune that
charmed all serpents,--that right tune that they must f