"The freshness of this high air to you! I take up my tale. The Bey and my father have continued inseparable. Twice have I guided Keller to the Garden Cottage, and twice has he beheld it with wandering eyes. I am so sure that he has taken little in and that he will be able to give Linn no proper satisfaction, that I have made a plan of each floor to scale, marking all the cupboards deep and shallow, all exits and entrances, and the distance from Gobelet itself, with the garden walks and coppices on a separate plan. These I send now, so that you can have them well studied before the Bey's return, when Linn and you will know a great deal more about the Garden Cottage than he will. The third expert in Arabic came to dinner to-night, and to my relief he wore his college gown. I was afraid that he might appear in the full black uniform of the Company of Jesus. Keller did not turn a hair. They addressed each other in the current Arabic of Algeria, and in a clapping of hands they were deep in the discussion of Abd-el-Kader and all manner of recent tribal matters among the clans of the Atlas. "I did not understand very much, and indeed even the scholarly Arabic of my father was momentarily put out by words and expressions so richly local that the recollection of them caused the Vicar Apostolic to laugh aloud. "As far as I could make out, however, there was talk of a threatened rebellion because of the defeat and humiliation of France, and how, from his home in Brousse, Abd-el-Kader was doing all he could to prevent it. The dinner was a great success, but my chief amusement was to watch the face of old Saunders McKie. "'Losh-an-entie, Maister Aaengus,' he said afterwards, 'to think that men wha can talk a reasonable civilised langwage like English, or even a chatter-chatter like the French, should bemean themselves to roar at yin anither like the beasts o' the forest!' "I told him that in all probability Jesus of Nazareth and his disciples spoke a dialect of it. Now I did not know how closely Aramaic approached Arabic, but I did know that the argument was calculated to impress Saunders. However, he only said, 'Maybe, but I think none the mair o' them for a caper like that, and I have ay been informed by them that kens a deal mair than you, Maister Aaengus, that when the disceeples spak' or wrote, they set their tongues to the Greek, which is a decent responsible dead language, and weel thocht o' amang learned folks, or they would never spend sae muckle time learning it to the puir divinity laddies at the college.' I argued, somewhat foolishly, that most universities now had a professor of Arabic, but Saunders only said, 'Guid peety them that has to sit under _him_!'