, keen one, and perhaps fancied suspicion
in both. If he had intended to let the Englishmen drive away in their
motor-car without seeing the other side of his white wall, he now
changed his mind. "If thou and thy friend care to honour this poor farm
of mine by entering the gates, and drinking coffee with me," he said,
"We will afterwards go down below the hill to the cemetery where my
cousin's body lies buried. His tombstone will show that he was El Hadj,
and that he had reached Mecca. When he was in Constantinople, he had
just returned from there."

Possibly, having given the invitation by way of proving that there was
nothing to conceal, Ben Sliman hoped it would not be accepted; but he
was disappointed. Before the Caid had reached the top of the hill,
Nevill had told his chauffeur to stop the motor, therefore the restless
panting had long ago ceased, and when Ben Sliman looked doubtfully at
the car, as if wondering how it was to be got in without doing damage to
his wall, Nevill said that the automobile might stay where it was. Their
visit would not be long.

"But the longer the better," replied the Caid. "When I have guests, it
pains me to see them go."

He shouted a word or two in Arabic, and instantly the gates were opened.
The sketchily clad brown men inside had only been waiting for a signal.

"I regret that I cannot ask my visitors into the house itself, as I have
illness there," Ben Sliman announced; "but we have guest rooms here in
the gate-towers. They are not what I could wish for such distinguished
personages, but thou canst see, Sidi, thou and thy friend, that this is
a simple farmhouse. We make no pretension to the luxury of towns, but we
do what we can."

As he spoke, the brown men were scuttling about, one unfastening the
door of a little tower, which stuck as if it had not been opened for a
long time, another darting into the house, which appeared silent and
tenantless, a third and fourth running to a more distant part, and
vanishing also through a dark doorway.

The Caid quickly ushered his guests into the tower room, but not so
quickly that the eyes of a girl, looking through a screened window, did
not see and recognize both. The servant who had gone ahead unbarred a
pair of wooden shutters high up in the whitewashed walls of the tower,
which was stiflingly close, with a musty, animal odour. As the opening
of the shutters gave light, enormous black-beetles which seemed to
Stephen as large as