musky scented
twilight, were like shadowy gnomes.

By and by, as the newcomers penetrated farther into the mysterious
labyrinth of the vast Zaouia, the corridors and courts became less
ruined in appearance. The walls were whitewashed; the palm-wood doors
were roughly carved and painted in bright colours, which could be seen
by the flicker of lamps set high in little niches. Each tunnel-like
passage had a carved archway at the end, and at last they entered one
which was closed in with beautiful doors of wrought iron.

Through the rich network they could see into a court where everything
glimmered white in moonlight. They had come to the court of the mosque,
which had on one side an entrance to the private house of the marabout,
the great Sidi El Hadj Mohammed ben Abd-el-Kader.

* * * * * * *

"Lella Saida, oh light of the young moon, if it please thee, thou hast
two guests come from very far off," announced an old negress to the
woman who had been looking out over the golden silence of the desert.

It was an hour since she had come down from the roof, and having eaten a
little bread, with soup, she lay on a divan writing in a small book.
Several tall copper lamps with open-work copper shades, jewelled and
fringed with coloured glass, gave a soft and beautiful light to the
room. It had pure white walls, round which, close to the ceiling, ran a
frieze of Arab lettering, red, and black, and gold. The doors and
window-blinds and little cupboards were of cedar, so thickly inlaid with
mother-o'-pearl, that only dark lines of the wood defined the white
patterning of leaves and flowers.

The woman had thrown off the blue drapery that had covered her head, and
her auburn hair glittered in the light of the lamp by which she wrote.
She looked up, vexed.

"Thou knowest, Noura, that for years I have received no guests," she
said, in a dialect of the Soudan, in which most Saharian mistresses of
Negro servants learn to talk. "I can see no one. The master would not
permit me to do so, even if I wished it, which I do not."

"Pardon, loveliest lady. But this is another matter. A friend of our
lord brings these visitors to thee. One is kin of his. She seeks to be
healed of a malady, by the power of the Baraka. But the other is a
Roumia."

The wife of the great marabout shut the book in which she had been
writing, and her mind travelled quickly to the sender of the
carrier-pigeon