s to the letter.

Our English friend was much too angry to talk Arabic. He bade me tell
the sheykh he was a liar, and that the country was as bare of tigers
as his soul of truth. Some of our fellah adherents seconded my speech.
The sheykh appeared amazed and greatly horrified.

'There are tigers,' he assured us, 'naturally! All that you desire.'

'Then go and find them for us!' said our friend, vindictively.

'Upon my head,' replied the complaisant old man, laying his right hand
on his turban reverently. 'To hear is to obey.'

We regarded this reply as mere politeness, the affair as ended. What
was our surprise next morning to see the sheykh and all the able men,
accompanied by many children, set off up the mountain armed with
staves and scimitars, and all the antique armament the village
boasted! It had been our purpose to depart that day, but we remained
to watch the outcome of that wondrous hunting.

The villagers spread out and 'beat' the mountain. All day long we
heard their shouts far off among the upper heights. If any tiger had
been there they must assuredly have roused him. But they returned at
evening empty-handed, and as truly crestfallen as if they had indeed
expected to bring home a bag of fifty tigers. One man presented me
with a dead owl--the same, I think, which we had startled on the day
before, as if to show that their display had not been quite in vain.

'No tigers!' sighed the sheykh, as though his heart were broken. 'What
can have caused them all to go away? Unhappy day!' A lamentable wail
went up from the whole crowd. 'A grievous disappointment, but the
world is thus. But,' he added, with a sudden brightening, 'if your
Honours will but condescend to stay a week or two, no doubt they will
return.'

CHAPTER XVI

PRIDE AND A FALL

There was to be a grand fantasia at the castle of the greatest of
Druze sheykhs in honour of a visit from the English Consul-General in
Syria; and as an Englishman I was invited to be there. It was a
journey of a day and a half. Upon the second morning Rashid and I had
not gone far ere we fell in with other horsemen wending in the same
direction as ourselves, well mounted and in holiday attire. All
greeted us politely, but we kept apart, because they nearly all rode
mares while we rode stallions--a fruitful source of trouble and a
cause of war.

At length a young man mounted on a stallion overtook us with most
cordial greetings. I had met him often. He