bitter draught which was the one luxury left to them. The thorns crackled, a couple of oil wicks placed in holes above the columns, which had been contrived for them by the men-at-arms of old, sent a feeble ray into the darkness, and Ghanim took the rebaba and drew from its single string a wailing melody to which he chanted the stories of his race.

'My lady khan, this is the song of 'Abd ul ‘Aziz ibn er Rashid.'

He sang of a prince great and powerful, patron of poets, leader of raids, and recently overwhelmed and slain in battle; but old or new, the songs were all pages out of the same chronicle, the undated chronicle of the nomad. The thin melancholy music rose up into the blackness of the vault; across the opening at the end of the hall, where the wall had fallen in part away, was spread the deep still night and the unchanging beauty of the stars.

'My lady khan,' said Ghanim, 'I will sing you the song of Ukheidhar.'

But I said, 'Listen to the verse of Ukheidhar':

'We wither away but they wane not, the stars that above us rise;

And the mountains remain after us, and the strong towers.'

'Allah!' murmured the Ma'ashi, as he swept noiselessly round the circle with the coffee cups, and once again Lebid's noble couplet held the company, as it had held those who sat in the banqueting hall of the khalif.

One night I was provided with a different entertainment. I had worked from sunrise till dark and was too tired to sleep. The desert was as still as death; infinitely mysterious, it stretched away from my camp and I lay watching the empty sands as one who watches for a pageant. Suddenly a bullet whizzed over the tent and the crack of a rifle broke the silence. All my men jumped up; a couple more shots rang out, and Fattuh hastily disposed the muleteers round the tents and hurried off to join a band of Arabs who had streamed from the castle gate. I picked up a revolver and went out to see them go. In a minute or two they had vanished under the uncertain light of the moon, which seems so clear and yet discloses so little. A zaptieh joined me and we

stood still listening. Far out in the desert the red flash of rifles cut through the white moonlight; again the quick flare and then again silence. At last through the night drifted the sound of a wild song, faint and far away, rhythmic, elemental as the night and the desert. I waited in complete uncertainty as to what was approaching, and it was not until they were close upon us that we recognised our own Arabs and Fattuh in their midst. They came on, still singing, with their rifles over their shoulders; their white garments gleamed under the moon; they wore no kerchiefs upon their beads, and their black hair fell in curls about their faces. Ma'ashi,' I cried, 'what happened?'

Ma'ashi shook his hair out of his eyes.

'There is nothing, my lady khan. 'Ali saw some men lurking in the desert at the 'asr [the hour of afternoon prayer] and we watched after dark from the walls.' 'They were raiders of the Beni Dhafi'a,' said Ghanim, mentioning a particular lawless tribe.

'Fattuh,' said I, 'did you shoot?'

'We shot,' replied Fattuh-' did not your Excellency hear?-and one man is wounded.'

A wild-looking boy held out his hand, on which I detected a tiny scratch.

There is no harm,' said I. 'Praise God!'

'Praise God!' they repeated, and I left them laughing and talking eagerly, and went to bed and to sleep.

Next morning I questioned Fattuh as to the events of the night, but he was exceptionally non-committal.

'My lady,' said he, 'God knows. 'Ali says that they were men of the Beni Dhafi'a.' Then with a burst of confidence he added, 'But I saw no one.'

'At whom did you shoot?' said I in bewilderment.

At the Beni Dhafi'a,' answered Fattuh, surprised at the stupidity of the question.

I gave it up, neither do I know to this hour whether we were or were not raided in the night.

Two days later my plan was finished. I had turned one of the vaulted rooms of the stable into a workshop, and spreading a couple of waterproof sheets on the sand for table, had drawn it out to scale lying on the ground. Sometimes an Arab came in silently and stood watching my pencil, until the superior attractions of

the next chamber, in which sat the muleteers and the zaptiehs, drew him away. As I added up metres and centimetres I could hear them spinning long yarns of city and desert. Occasionally Ma'ashi brought me coffee. 'God give you the reward,' said I.

'And your reward,' he answered. Only the daughter of kings could write such a picture.'

The day we left Kheidhar, the desert was wrapped in the stifling dust of a west wind. I have no notion what the country is like through which we rode for seven hours to Kerbela, and no memory, save that of the castle walls fading like a dream into the haze, of a bare ridge of hill to our right hand and the bitter waves of a salt lake to our left, and of deep sand through which we were driven by a wind that was the very breath of the Pit. Then out of the mist loomed the golden dome of the shrine of Hussein, upon whom be peace, and few pious pilgrims were gladder than I when we stopped to drink a glass of tea at the first Persian tea-shop of the holy city.