E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, S. D., and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) BYE-WAYS by ROBERT HICHENS Author of "The Garden of Allah," "Bella Donna," etc. New York Dodd, Mead and Company 1914 Copyright, 1897, By Dodd, Mead and Company. CONTENTS PAGE THE CHARMER OF SNAKES 3 A TRIBUTE OF SOULS Prelude 89 I. The Stranger by the Burn 90 II. The Soul of Dr Wedderburn 111 III. The Soul of Kate Walters 131 IV. The Soul of Hugh Fraser 142 V. The Return of the Grey Traveller 159 Written in conjunction with Lord Frederick Hamilton. AN ECHO IN EGYPT 171 THE FACE OF THE MONK 211 THE MAN WHO INTERVENED 237 AFTER TO-MORROW 267 A SILENT GUARDIAN 287 A BOUDOIR BOY 319 THE TEE-TO-TUM 343 BYE-WAYS THE CHARMER OF SNAKES I The petulant whining of the jackals prevented Renfrew from sleeping. At first he lay still on his camp bed, staring at the orifice of the bell tent, which was only partially covered by the canvas flap let down by Mohammed, after he had bidden his master good-night. Behind the tent the fettered mules stamped on the rough, dry ground, and now and then the heavy rustling of a wild boar could be heard, as it shuffled through the scrub towards the water that lay in the hollow beyond the camp. The wayward songs of the Moorish attendants had died into silence. They slept, huddled together and shrouded in their djelabes. But their wailing rapture of those old triumphant days when on the heights above Granada, beneath the eternal snows, their brethren walked as conquerors, had been succeeded by the cries of the uneasy beasts that throng the mountains between Tangier and Tetuan. And Renfrew said to himself that the jackals kept him from sleeping. He lay still and wondered if Claire were awake in her tent close by. If so, if her dark eyes were unclouded, what journeys must her imagination be making! She was so sensitive to sound of any kind. A cry moved her sometimes with a swift violence that alarmed those around her. The message of a note of music shut one door on her soul, opened another, and let her in to strange regions in which she chose to be lonely.