“No, sir.” The young man stumbled to his feet. “Nor I. The heat is really.... Shall we seek relief on the terrace?” Bent followed him, and having extinguished the lamp Mr. Blandhorn led the way out. He dragged a strip of matting to the edge of the parapet, and the two men sat down on it side by side. There was no moon, but a sky so full of stars that the city was outlined beneath it in great blue-gray masses. The air was motionless, but every now and then a wandering tremor stirred it and died out. Close under the parapet lay the bales and saddle-packs of the caravansary, between vaguer heaps, presumably of sleeping camels. In one corner, the star-glitter picked out the shape of a trough brimming with water, and stabbed it with long silver beams. Beyond the court rose the crenellations of the city walls, and above them one palm stood up like a tree of bronze. “Africa—” sighed Mr. Blandhorn. Willard Bent started at the secret echo of his own thoughts. “Yes. Never anything else, sir—” “Ah—” said the old man. A tang-tang of stringed instruments, accompanied by the lowing of an earthenware drum, rose exasperatingly through the night. It was the kind of noise that, one knew, had been going on for hours before one began to notice it, and would go on, unchecked and unchanging, for endless hours more: like the heat, like the drought—like Africa. Willard slapped at a mosquito. “It’s a party at the wool-merchant’s, Myriem tells me,” Mr. Blandhorn remarked. It really seemed as if, that night, the thoughts of the two men met without the need of words. Willard Bent was aware that, for both, the casual phrase had called up all the details of the scene: fat merchants in white bunches on their cushions, negresses coming and going with trays of sweets, champagne clandestinely poured, ugly singing-girls yowling, slim boys in petticoats dancing—perhaps little Ahmed among them. “I went down to the court just now. Ayoub has disappeared,” Mr. Blandhorn continued. “Of course. When I heard in the bazaar that a black caravan was in from the south I knew he’d be off....” Mr. Blandhorn lowered his voice. “Willard—have you reason to think ... that Ayoub joins in their rites?” “Myriem has always said he was a Hamatcha, sir. Look at those queer cuts and scars on him.... It’s a much bloodier sect than the Aissaouas.” Through the nagging throb of the instruments came a sound of human wailing, cadenced, terrible, relentless, carried from a long way off on a lift of the air. Then the air died, and the wailing with it. “From somewhere near the Potter’s Field ... there’s where the caravan is camping,” Willard murmured. The old man made no answer. He sat with his head bowed, his veined hands grasping his knees; he seemed to his disciple to be whispering fragments of Scripture. “Willard, my son, this is our fault,” he said at length. “What—? Ayoub?”