This statement shook Sidney’s faith both in the judgment and the veracity of Hassan. At the same time it decided him on keeping a closer watch over the proceedings of Mr Lascelles Hamilton. He had seen enough of diplomatic society to know that he might have been, or be, a minister plenipotentiary; but still he could hardly give him credit for speaking Arabic as well as Hassan, having heard him pronounce a few common words. Whether he was the son of the general of cavalry of the king of Lahore, as he himself asserted, or a German Jew, as Mr Campbell declared with equal confidence, Sidney pretended not to decide. The party at the palm-tree at length retired to rest. Sidney, wearing the Egyptian dress, had adopted the native habits in travelling, and attempted to sleep on a single carpet spread on the sand. The attempt was vain. The excitement caused equally by fatigue of body and mind, and the unusual restraint of his clothes, drove sleep from his eyelids; while one train of thought followed another with all the vividness and incoherence of a morning dream. He fancied he saw Mr Lascelles Hamilton rush into the tent of Mr Ringlady and cut off his head, and then, suddenly transformed into a minister of the Prince of Darkness, in full uniform, with a proboscis like an elephant, and a green tail like a boa-constrictor, deliver up the whole party, Fatmeh included, to Mohammed Ali in person. Jumping up in alarm at this strange vision, he saw to his amazement his companion, Aali, sitting very composedly; while Achmet was engaged in staining his face of a bronze colour, so dark as almost to emulate the ebon hue of El Khindi’s own skin. “What the d--l are you about, Achmet?” shouted Sidney in emphatic phrase. “Why are you going to make Aali’s face as black as your own?” Achmet grinned and replied,--“Very good against the sun, Mr Sidney; me make Aali look a true Beddauwee,--neither white like a boiled golgas, (he meant a yellow turnip) nor sooty like them d----n black fellow. You like, me paint you too.” Sidney, who was quite content to look in the desert like a boiled turnip, turned his back on the painter; and the incident having dispersed his dreams, he fell into a profound sleep. Long before daylight, the whole party was roused by the indefatigable Hassan. After the usual squabbling, yelling, singing, and bellowing of camels, the caravan was put in motion. They left Belbeïs without the literary Mr Campbell putting his foot within the circuit of the renowned city. Daylight found the party moving forward at what is a very rapid rate of travelling in the desert, whenever half-a-dozen dromedaries are together. They were actually proceeding at the rate of four miles an hour; now the average log of a fleet of camels rarely exceeds two and a half under the most favourable circumstances.