mists rose, every detail in the valley became distinct: little villages far below, crowning the rocky mounds on which the Arabs of the Yemen so love to build, stood out from the green fields all grey and severe, each a fortress in itself, with its battlements and towers. Around the pink-and-gold crags hovered little fleecy clouds, attracted by the small patches of snow—now hiding, now disclosing the grandeur of the mountain pinnacles. All our dangers were over; from here our road was safe. We were soon to enter the great plateau of the central Yemen, now safely once more in the hands of the Turks, though woe betide the Osmanli soldier who found himself alone and without protection. As I looked upon that glorious valley, more glorious than ever now that the sun had risen, I could not realise how exciting a time we had experienced in passing through it, so lovely, so quiet, so peaceful it seemed. Calling to Saïd, I told him to send me the man who had led us to Sôk el-Thuluth the night before. He had gone! Never a word of thanks, never a reward! He had left me sleeping, and gone back to his own affairs and to his own life. Like the character in some play that appears but once, so had this Arab come and gone. My men had tried to stop him, had tried to keep him until I awoke, promising him a reward, but he had laughed and shaken his raven curls, and, spear in hand, girded up his loins and vanished. Strange good fellow! he saved my life, and never even gave me the opportunity of thanking him! We had left one of our men the night before behind us at Beit Saïd. He had gone off in the evening to supper in the house of a friend, where he had slept, unaware of our flight. In the early morning he had found us gone, and followed us, not by the roundabout mountain-track we had come by, but by the main road. He solved the mystery of our flight, for but a few miles from Beit Saïd he found the road held by some forty men, armed to the teeth, whose object was my plunder. How little the poor fellows would have got! A few dollars and a little shabby clothing, an old carpet and a mattress, and that was about all. But they had imagined that I was a trader taking up great sums of money, and had resolved my death—for life is cheap out there—and the plundering of my goods. I asked our man what they had said to him. He replied that they had asked after me, and that finding I had been warned and escaped them, they went off laughing and swearing, apparently rather amused at the whole episode. Our rest had done us all good, and we set out with light hearts, knowing that no probable dangers lay ahead.