that way through two or three streets, and then my
guide turned into a dead alley closed in at the end by a house. In the
wall of the house there was a door. My guide looked cautiously round, but
there was no one to oversee us. He rapped gently with his knuckles on the
door, and immediately the door was opened. He beckoned to me, and went
quickly in. I followed him no less quickly. At once the door was shut
behind me, and I found myself in darkness. For a moment I was sure that I
had fallen into a trap, but my guide laid a hand upon my arm and led me
forward. I was brought into a small, bare room, where a woman sat upon
cushions. She was dressed in white like a Mohammedan woman of the East,
and over her face she wore a veil. But a sort of shrivelled aspect which
she had told me that she was very old. She dismissed the guide who had
brought me to her, and as soon as we were alone she said:

"'You are English.'

"And she spoke in English, though with a certain rustiness of speech, as
though that language had been long unfamiliar to her tongue.

"'No,' I replied, and I expressed my contempt of that infidel race in
suitable words.

"The old woman only laughed and removed her veil. She showed me an old
wizened face in which there was not a remnant of good looks--a face worn
and wrinkled with hard living and great sorrows.

"'You are English,' she said, 'and since I am English too, I thought that
I would like to speak once more with one of my own countrymen.'

"I no longer doubted. I took the hand she held out to me and--

"'But what are you doing here in Mecca?' I asked.

"'I live in Mecca,' she replied quietly. 'I have lived here for
twenty years.'

"I looked round that bare and sordid little room with horror. What
strange fate had cast her up there? I asked her, and she told me her
story. Guess what it was!"

Ralston shook his head.

"I can't imagine."

Hatch turned to Shere Ali.

"Can you?" he asked, and even as he asked he saw that a change had come
over the young Prince's mood. He was no longer oppressed with envy and
discontent. He was leaning forward with parted lips and a look in his
eyes which Hatch had not seen that evening--a look as if hope had somehow
dared to lift its head within him. And there was more than a look of
hope; there was savagery too.

"No. I want to hear," replied Shere Ali. "Go on, please! How did the
Englishwoman come to Mecca?"

"She was a governess in the family of an office