* * * * * [Sidenote: The Cold] A great mass of snow had recently covered the peaks, and in the valley up which I was trudging freezing gusts and very sharp scurries of cold rain disturbed the traveller. I had already passed the last ruins of the Romans and had seen, far off in the dusk, the last arch of the Legions standing all alone with one big tree beside it. The west was wild-red under the storm, and it was cut like a fret with the jagged edge of the Sierras, quite black, when I saw against the purple of a nearer hill the white cloak of an Arab. [Illustration] [Sidenote: The Arab] He drove a little cart—a light cart with two wheels. His horse was of such a sort as you may buy any day in Africa for ten pounds, that is, it was gentle, strong, swift, and small, and looked in the half-light as though it did not weigh upon the earth but as though it were accustomed to running over the tops of the sea. I said to the Arab: “Will you not give me a lift?” He answered: “If it is the will of God.” Hearing so excellent an answer, and finding myself a part of universal fate, I leapt into his cart and he drove along through the gloaming, and as he went he sang a little song which had but three notes in it, and each of these notes was divided from the next by only a quarter of a note. So he sang, and so I sat by his side. At last he saw that it was only right to break into talk, if for no other reason than that I was his guest; so he said quite suddenly, looking straight before him: “I am very rich.” “I,” said I, “am moderately poor.” At this he shook his head and said: “I am more fortunate than you; I am very, very rich.” He then wagged his head again slowly from side to side and was silent for a good minute or more. He next said slyly, with a mixture of curiosity and politeness: “My Lord, when you say you are poor you mean poor after the manner of the Romans, that is, with no money in your pocket but always the power to obtain it.” “No,” said I, “I have no land, and not even the power of which you speak. I am really, though moderately, poor. All that I get I earn by talking in public places in the cold weather, and in spring time and summer by writing and by other tricks.” He looked solemn for a moment, and then said: “Have you, indeed, no land?” I said “No” again; for at that moment I had none. Then he replied: “I have sixteen hundred acres of land.” When he had said this he tossed back his head in that lion-like way they have, for they are as theatrical as children or animals, and he went on: “Yes, and of these one-fourth is in good fruit-trees ... they bear ... they bear ... I cannot contain myself for well-being.” “God give you increase,” said I. “A good word,” said he, “and I would say the same to you but that you have nothing to increase with. However, it is the will of God. ‘To one man it comes, from another it goes,’ said the Berber, and again it is said, ‘Which of you can be certain?’”