To ride through the desert at night, they declared, was a venture from which no man was likely to come out alive. I hesitated-it requires much courage to face risks for others-but Fattuh stood firm, 'Ali laughed, and the thought of the bed carried the day. They started at eight in the evening, and I watched them disappear across the sands with some sinking of heart. All next day I was too well occupied to give them much thought, but when six o'clock came and 'Ali set watchers upon the castle walls, I began to feel anxious. Half an hour later Ma'ashi, the sheikh's brother, and my particular friend, came running down to my tent.

'Praise God! my lady khan, they are here.'

The Arabs gathered round to offer their congratulations, and Fattuh rode in, grey with fatigue and dust, the caravan at his heels. He had reached Kerbela at five in the morning, found the muleteers, bought provisions, loaded the animals, and set off again about ten.

'And the oranges are good in Kerbela,' he ended triumphantly. I have brought your Excellency a whole bag of them.'

It was a fine performance.

The Arabs who inhabited Kheidhar had come there two years before from Jof in Nejd: Because we were vexed with the government of Ibn er Rashid,' explained 'Ali, and I readily understood that his could not be a soothing rule. The wooden howdahs in which the women had travelled blocked one of the long corridors, and some twenty families lodged upon the ground in the vaulted chambers of princes. They lived and starved and died in this most splendid memorial of their own civilisation, and even in decay Kheidhar offered a shelter more than sufficient for their needs to the race at whose command it had been reared. Their presence was an essential part of its proud decline. The sheikh and his brothers passed like ghosts along the passages, they trailed their white robes down the stairways that led to the high chambers where they lived with their women, and at night they gathered round the hearth in the great hall, where their forefathers had beguiled the hours with tale and song in the same rolling tongue of Nejd. Then they would pile up the desert scrub till the embers glowed under the coffee-pots, while Ma'ashi handed round the delicious

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