oach.

Absalem came up to her to tell her some details of the night's
festivity. Before he spoke she said to him:--

"Where does the desert lie?"

He told her.

"Does the miracle man come from there?"

Absalem answered that no one knew. He had been much in Wasan, the sacred
city of Morocco; but none knew his birthplace, his tribe, his name.
Often he disappeared, no man could tell whither. But, doubtless, he
made vast journeys. Some said that he had exhibited his snakes on the
banks of the Nile, that he had gone with the pilgrim trains to Mecca,
that he knew Khartoum as he knew Marakesh, and that he never ceased from
wandering.

"What is his age?" Claire asked.

Absalem answered that he must be old, but that Time had no power over
him.

"He miracle man; he live long as he wish."

Last she asked when he would leave Tetuan.

"Perhaps this night. Perhaps to-morrow night, perhaps never. Perhaps he
go already."

"Already!"

Suddenly Claire moved out from the tent, and joined Renfrew, who was
still watching her, and weaving lover's fancies about her white figure.

"Have you been here long, Desmond?" she asked.

"Very long, dearest. Are you rested?"

"Quite. From here you can see all the people travelling away from the
city towards the sea?"

"Yes."

"Have you been watching them?"

"Yes, indeed; for half the afternoon."

She turned her great eyes on him searchingly, and seemed as if she
checked a question which was almost on her lips.

"They must have been a strange multitude," she said at length. "I wonder
where they are all going?"

"Some to the villages in the plain, some to the coast. I saw the Riffs
who were in the Soko pass by. I suppose they were returning to the
caverns from which they plunder becalmed vessels, Spanish and
Portuguese."

"The Riffs--yes?"

Her intonation suggested that she was waiting for some further
information. Renfrew's curiosity was aroused.

"Why do you look at me like that?" he asked. "What do you want to know?"

"Nothing, Desmond. How dark it is getting! There is Mohammed ringing the
bell. And look, those must be the soldiers. They are just marching in
from the city."

With the coming of night a wind arose, blowing towards the sea from the
mountains; and with it came up a troop of clouds which blotted out stars
and moon, and plunged the plain into a gulf of darkness. Tetuan does not
gleam with lamps at night like a European city, and all the distant
villas of