They had passed round the bend of the hill up which the cemetery slopes, and were come within view of the market-place. Charnock was puzzled by his unanswered question, and the question was forced to his notice again that afternoon, and with yet greater force. It was market-day. Charnock beheld stretched out beneath him a great field, or rather a great plain, (for the grass was long since trampled into mud,) which curved down to the yellow sun-baked wall of the city, and whereon an innumerable throng, Negroes from Timbuctoo, Arabs, Jews, and Moors, in all manner of raiment, from rags to coloured robes, jostled and seethed, bawled and sweated, under a hot sun and in a brilliant air. Here an old hag screamed aloud the virtues of her merchandise, a few skinny onions and vegetables; there two men forced a passage with blows of their sticks, and behind them a stately train of camels brought in from the uplands their loads of dates. A Riffian sauntered by with an indifferent air, his silver-mounted gun upon his back, a pair of pistols in his belt, and a great coarse tail of hair swinging between his shoulders. He needed no couriers to prepare his way. At one spot a serpent-charmer thrust out his tongue, from which a snake was hanging by the fangs; at another a story-teller, vivid in narration, and of an extraordinary aptness in his gestures, held an audience enchained. From every side the din of human voices rose into the air, and to the din was added the snarling of camels, the braying of donkeys, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of oxen, and all manner of squeals and grunts, so that it seemed the whole brute creation had combined to make one discordant orchestra. Into this Babel Charnock descended. "Those are the shoemakers," said Hamet. He pointed to a cluster of tiny grimed gunny-bag tents in a corner of the highest part of the Sôk. In the doorways of the tents a few men sat cobbling; one or two wood fires crackled in the intervals between the tents; and in close proximity a dead mule took its last unsavoury sleep. "Hassan Akbar sleeps in the mud near to the tents," continued Hamet. "Every evening he comes down to the Sôk, buys milk and bread from the shoemakers, and sleeps--" "Near to that mule!" interrupted Charnock. "And he was the richest man in all Tangier." A moment later there was shown to him the second picture which he was to carry away from Tangier. Down the Sôk, through the crowd, came the Moor, in his spotless robes, and a few yards behind him, striding swiftly and noiselessly, the blind gaunt beggar of the cemetery gate followed upon his trail. In and out amongst the shifting groups he threaded and wound, and never erred in his pursuit. The man in whose track he kept never spoke when all were shouting, yet Hassan never faltered. The sound of his footsteps was lost in a multitude of the like sounds, yet Hassan was somehow sensible of it, somehow to his ears it emerged distinct.