“Malaish!” answered the Mudir. “Water,” he added quickly. He had no power to move, for fear had paralysed him. Dicky brought him a goolah of water. The next morning, at sunrise, a strange procession drew near to the Birket-el-Kurun. Twenty ghaffirs went ahead with their naboots; then came the kavasses, then the Mudir mounted, with Dicky riding beside, his hand upon the holster where his pistol was. The face of the Mudir was like a wrinkled skin of lard, his eyes had the look of one drunk with hashish. Behind them came the woman, and now upon her face there was only a look of peace. The distracted gaze had gone from her eyes, and she listened without a tremor to the voices of the wailers behind. Twenty yards from the lake, Dicky called a halt--Dicky, not the Mudir. The soldiers came forward and put heavy chains and a ball upon the woman’s ankles. The woman carried the ball in her arms to the very verge of the lake, by the deep pool called “The Pool of the Slaughtered One.” Dicky turned to the Mudir. “Are you ready?” he said. “Inshallah!” said the Mudir. The soldiers made a line, but the crowd overlapped the line. The fellaheen and Bedouins looked to see the Mudir summon the Ulema to condemn the woman to shame and darkness everlasting. But suddenly Abbas Bey turned and took the woman’s right hand in his left. Her eyes opened in an ecstasy. “O lord and master, I go to heaven with thee!” she said, and threw herself forward. Without a sound the heavy body of the Mudir lurched forward with her, and they sank into the water together. A cry of horror and wonder burst from the crowd. Dicky turned to them, and raised both hands. “In the name of our master the Khedive!” he cried. Above the spot where the two had sunk floated the red tarboosh of the Mudir of the Fayoum. A TREATY OF PEACE Mr. William Sowerby, lieutenant in the Mounted Infantry, was in a difficult situation, out of which he was little likely to come with credit--or his life. It is a dangerous thing to play with fire, so it is said; it is a more dangerous thing to walk rough-shod over Oriental customs. A man ere this has lost his life by carrying his shoe-leather across the threshold of a mosque, and this sort of thing William Sowerby knew, and of his knowledge he heeded. He did not heed another thing, however; which is, that Oriental ladies are at home to but one man in all the world, and that your acquaintance with them must be modified by a mushrabieh screen, a yashmak, a shaded, fast-driving brougham, and a hideous eunuch.