yed in all things,
with the natural result in loss of time and loss of luggage, sickness
and discomfort. That was his way of taking vengeance on the Heavy
Ones.

'And yet the man was happy, having had things his own way, even after
the most horrid and disastrous journey ever made,' he told me with a
sigh. 'Some men are asses.'

One afternoon, when I was riding round the bay from Akka towards the
foot of Carmel, supposing Suleyman to be a hundred miles away, I came
upon a group of tourists by the river Kishon, on the outskirts of the
palm grove. They had alighted and were grouped around a dragoman in
gorgeous raiment, like gulls around a parrot. The native of the land
was holding forth to them. His voice was richly clerical in
intonation, which made me notice that his audience consisted solely of
members of the clergy and their patient women.

'This, ladies and gentlemen,' the rascal was declaiming like a man
inspired, 'is that ancient riffer, the riffer Kishon. It was here that
the great Brophet Elijah bring the Brophets of Baal after he catch
them with that dirty trick which I exblain to you about the sacrifice
ub there upon that mountain what you see behind you. Elijah he come
strollin' down, quite habby, to this ancient riffer, singin' one
little song; and the beoble they lug down those wicked brophets. Then
Elijah take one big, long knife his uncle gif him and sharben it ubon
a stone like what I'm doin'. Then he gif a chuckle and he look among
those brophets; and he see one man he like the look of, nice and fat;
and he say: "Bring me that man!" They bring that man; Elijah slit his
throat and throw him in the riffer. Then he say: "Bring his brother!"
and they bring his brother, and he slit his throat and throw him in
the riffer ... till they was ALL gone. Then Elijah clean his knife
down in the earth, and when he'd finished laughin' he put ub a brayer.

'That was a glorious massycration, gentlemen!'

The preacher was Suleyman, at struggle with the Heavy Ones. He was not
at all abashed when he caught sight of me.

CHAPTER XX

LOVE AND THE PATRIARCH

I was staying for some weeks at Howard's Hotel in Jerusalem (Iskender
Awwad, the dragoman, had transformed himself into the Chevalier
Alexander Howard, a worthy, if choleric, gentleman, and a good friend
of mine), and I rode out every day upon a decent pony, which I had
discovered in the stables at the back of the hotel. One afternoon a
nephew of the sta