Our immense companion tapped mysteriously at the door, the sound of the mandolin ceased, and we heard some one coming cautiously down-stairs. A few whispered words were exchanged, followed by the noise of heavy bolts being drawn, the door swung back, and we found ourselves in front of a rickety wooden staircase at the foot of which stood an Arab in tattered clothes, who held aloft a hissing acetylene lamp. He scrutinized us closely, and then, bidding us enter, drew aside as we filed slowly past and followed our fat friend up the stairs. The janitor waited till we were all inside, and then with a clash shot back the bolts, and we felt ourselves prisoners in this illicit haunt. At the top of the stairs we came to a room dimly lighted, and the first thing which struck our attention was an enormous skin full of water. When I say that it struck our attention it is not quite exact, as in reality it was struck by the head of my friend S. A., who had not noticed it until a stream of icy water poured down his back. When we had recovered from this pleasing little incident we looked about us. On the floor all round the little room squatted men of all ages and grades—some in rags, some in prosperous-looking _gandourahs_, some in very modern red fezzes—but all with the same hungry look on their drawn faces. At the far end the Arab who had opened the door attended to the little fireplace ornamented with colored tiles and on which he prepared coffee and mint tea; in the middle of the group sat the mandolinist playing with a far-away look in his shining eyes. The air was heavy with a sweet, rather sickly smell, an odor not unlike new-mown hay, only stronger. A bench was mysteriously produced for us and for our stout companion, who explained that if he sat on the ground he would never be able to get up again. Tea was placed before us, and then rather diffidently one of the corpses on the floor rose and offered Miss G. a small pipe. Seeing she was prepared to smoke, he drew a wallet from the folds of his _gandourah_ and filled the bowl with the strange grayish-green, tobacco-looking matter, and handed it back to her. In the meanwhile we had also been supplied with similar pipes, and in a few moments we had lighted up. The taste was not pleasant to the regular pipe-smoker like myself, and at the same time it was not as nasty as my first attempts at smoking when in the depths of a wood my brother and I, aged nine and ten, filled a cast-off pipe of my father’s with brown paper in the belief that we were smoking! Keef is better than brown paper. The taste and smell were rather like that of hay.