The notable figure had instantly arrested
his attention, and held it until it passed from view.

"Isn't he, though, Yankee?" Dicky repeated, and pressed a knuckle into
the other's waistcoat.

"Isn't he what?"

"Isn't he bully--in your own language?"

"In figure; but I couldn't see his face distinctly."

"You'll see that presently. You could cut a whole Egyptian Ministry out
of that face, and have enough left for an American president or the head
of the Salvation Army. In all the years I've spent here I've never seen
one that could compare with him in nature, character, and force. A
few like him in Egypt, and there'd be no need for the money-barbers of
Europe."

"He seems an ooster here--you know him?"

"Do I!" Dicky paused and squinted up at the tall Southerner. "What do
you suppose I brought you out from your Consulate for to see--the view
from Ebn Mahmoud? And you call yourself a cute Yankee?"

"I'm no more a Yankee than you are, as I've told you before," answered
the American with a touch of impatience, yet smilingly. "I'm from South
Carolina, the first State that seceded."

"Anyhow, I'm going to call you Yankee, to keep you nicely disguised.
This is the land of disguises."

"Then we did not come out to see the view?" the other drawled. There was
a quickening of the eye, a drooping of the lid, which betrayed a sudden
interest, a sense of adventure.

Dicky laid his head back and laughed noiselessly. "My dear Renshaw,
with all Europe worrying Ismail, with France in the butler's pantry and
England at the front door, do the bowab and the sarraf go out to take
air on the housetops, and watch the sun set on the Pyramids and make
a rainbow of the desert? I am the bowab and the sarraf, the
man-of-all-work, the Jack-of-all-trades, the 'confidential' to the
Oriental spendthrift. Am I a dog to bay the moon--have I the soul of a
tourist from Liverpool or Poughkeepsie?"

The lanky Southerner gripped his arm. "There's a hunting song of the
South," he said, "and the last line is, 'The hound that never tires.'
You are that, Donovan Pasha--"

"I am 'little Dicky Donovan,' so they say," interrupted the other.

"You are the weight that steadies things in this shaky Egypt. You are
you, and you've brought me out here because there's work of some kind to
do, and because--"

"And because you're an American, and we speak the same language."

"And our Consulate is all right, if needed, whatever it is. You've
played a squ