"Well, I blew myself," reported Mr. Peasley. "And I'll bet a thousand dollars that Mahmoud gets his ten per cent." Whereupon Mahmoud smiled--the pensive, patronising smile of a civilisation five thousand years old looking down on the aboriginal product of the Western prairies. On the morning of our departure from Luxor Mahmoud came around for his letter of recommendation. I had worked for an hour to write something evasive which would satisfy him and not perjure me too deeply. When he came to the hotel I gave him the following:-- To Whom It May Concern:--The bearer, Mahmoud, has been our dragoman for four days and has attended us faithfully at all hours; also, he has shown us as many temples as we wished to see. He looked at the paper blankly and said, "I do not read English." At that Mr. Peasley brightened up. He read the testimonial aloud to Mahmoud and declared that it was incomplete and unworthy of the subject matter. In ten minutes he completed the following and the dragoman took it away with him, highly pleased:-- To Whom It May Concern--Greeting:--The bearer, Mahmoud, is a dragoman of monumental mendacity and commercial Machiavellism. His simulated efforts to faithfully serve us and protect our interests have had an altogether negative effect. Anyone employing him will find him possessed of moral turpitude and a superlative consciousness of his own worth. His knowledge of Egyptian history is enormously inconsequential, while his English vocabulary is amazing in its variety of verbal catastrophes. We commend him to travellers desirous of studying the native characteristics of the most geological stratum of society. "He has made a lot of trouble for us, and now we've got even by ruining him," said Mr. Peasley. It seemed a joke at the time, but later on, when we thought it over, we felt sorry for Mahmoud and wished we had not taken such a mean advantage of him. After all is said and done, a man must make a living. On our way back to Cairo from Assouan we stopped over at Luxor. Mahmoud, by intuition or through telepathy, knew that we were coming and met us at the station. He was overjoyed to see us again. "I showed your letter to a gentleman from the Kingdom of Ohio," said he, "and it procured for me one of the best jobs I ever had." IN CAIRO CHAPTER XX MR. PEASLEY AND HIS FINAL SIZE-UP OF EGYPT On the morning of our hurried pack up and get away from Luxor we lost Mr. Peasley. It was a half-hour before the sailing of the boat, and we were attempting to lock trunks, call in the porters, give directions as to forwarding mail, and tip everybody except the proprietor all at the same time.