for our gun, or else
persuaded him that it was worth a hundred pounds, and then presented
it. In either case I should have crushed those people utterly. But,
for a man in your position to accept eight pounds for such a
weapon--and proclaim it worth no more--that is a shame! If your desire
was money, you should not have touched the matter personally, but have
left it altogether in the hands of me, your servant, who am always
careful of your honour, which is mine as well.'

He sulked with me thereafter for two days.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Licence.

CHAPTER XXXIII

MY BENEFACTOR

When I knew at length that I was going to leave Syria, I was seized
with a desire to buy all kinds of notions of the country to show to my
people at home--a very foolish way of spending money, I am now aware,
for such things lose significance when taken from their proper
setting.

In after days, when leaving Syria for England, the one thing I would
purchase for myself was a supply of reed pens for Arabic writing. But
on that first occasion I wished to carry the whole country with me.

There was an old, learned Christian of Beyrout, who had given me
lessons in Arabic at various times, and always waited on me honourably
whenever I alighted in that loveliest and most detestable of seaport
towns. He wore the baggiest of baggy trousers, looking just like
petticoats, a short fez with enormous hanging tassel, a black alpaca
coat of French design, a crimson vest, white cotton stockings, and
elastic-sided boots, convenient to pull off ere entering a room. He
always carried in the street a silver-headed cane, which he would lean
with care against the wall of any room he chanced to enter, never
laying it upon the ground, or on a chair or table. In all the time of
my acquaintance with him I never, that I can remember, saw him really
smile, though something like a twinkle would occasionally touch his
eyes beneath great bushy eyebrows, between black and grey. An
extraordinarily strong and heavy grey moustache, with drooping ends,
gave him a half-pathetic, half-imposing likeness to some aged walrus;
so that some of the common people actually called him 'Sheykh el Bahr'
(the old man of the sea)--which is the proper Arabic designation of a
walrus.

He came to see me after I had left the hospital and was staying with
some English friends for a few days before returning to the wilds for
a farewell; and repeatedly praised Allah for my safe recovery. Th