When the sheikh swore by his beard the matter was serious, and if Daireh had heard him he would not have walked along between the guards who arrested him with so impudent an air. He had so often been had up, and had got the best of his accusers, that he felt quite safe. For he knew well the customs which had the force of laws in the country, and took care not to violate them, though straining every point to his advantage. And the Sheikh Burrachee was just, and however much he might sympathise with the complainant, would not allow his judgment to be affected by his feelings. It was indeed a rough-and-ready justice, not always consistent, and such as would not meet entire approval from any civilised persons; he went on the principle that when he could not do what he would, he did what he could, to set things straight according to his judgment and the evidence before him, adopting the habits of the people with whom he had identified himself, who had not the horror of physical pain--for others--or the employment of it to elicit truth, which we have. He rose from the divan by the garden where he had been sitting with Harry, and, beckoning to the latter to follow him, proceeded to the outer and larger hall, where he took his seat, with his nephew at his side. And hardly had he done so when Daireh was brought in. He salaamed with a confident air, which expressed, "Who will find me tripping? It would take a clever fellow to do that. They are willing enough to agree to my terms when they want to borrow, but when I claim my own, there is all this bother and outcry, and I am dragged before the sheikh forsooth!" But he looked more serious when the Sheikh Burrachee said to him-- "Daireh, where are the two wills you stole from Burrows and Fagan, the Dublin lawyers, when you ran away from their employ?" Surely such an incongruous question was never put in an Arab town in the heart of Africa by a sheikh dressed in bernouse and turban, with a jewel-hilted yataghan at his side, sitting cross-legged on a cushion. No wonder Daireh was flabbergasted; such a thunderbolt out of a clear sky has seldom fallen upon any man. "Your Mightiness is mistaken," he stammered. "I have lived, earning an honest livelihood as a poor merchant, at Khartoum and Berber, Alexandria and Cairo. But what is Dublin? I know it not." "Is that your photograph?" asked Harry Forsyth, suddenly, in English. "No!" replied Daireh, startled into answering in the same language; and the moment he did so he could have bitten his tongue out for vexation. The sheikh took the likeness in his hand; it was unmistakable. "Here is your portrait, and it was taken in Dublin, for it bears that name upon it. Also you know English," he said. "I learned that language at Alexandria," replied Daireh, more firmly now he had collected his wits; "and I had a brother very like me who went beyond the seas, and may have lived in the place you speak of, for I never heard of him again."