"One evening the lad came to me and said the Room had gone up to a house on the hill above the Sôk, where there were many lights and much noise of feasting. So I went down the Sôk to where the Arabs slept by their camels and said to them, 'It will be to-night.' And as God willed it the night was dark. The lad led me to the house and I sat outside it till the noise grew less and many went away. At last the Nazarene Bentham came to the door and his mule was brought for him and he mounted. I asked the boy who guided me, 'Is it he?' and the boy answered 'Yes.' So I dismissed him and followed the mule down the hill to the Sôk, which was very quiet. Then I ran after him and called, and he stopped his mule till I came up with him. 'What is it?' he asked, and I threw a cloth over his head and dragged him from the mule. We both fell to the ground, but I had one arm about his neck pressing the cloth to his mouth so that he could not cry out. I pressed him into the mud of the Sôk and put my knee upon his chest and bound his arms together. Then I carried him to my tent and took the cloth from his head, for I wished to hear him speak and be sure that it was Bentham. But he understood my wish and would not speak. So I took his mule-hobbles which I had stolen while he feasted, and made them hot in a fire and tied them about his ankles and in a little while I made him cry out and I was sure. Then I stripped him of his clothes and put upon him my own rags. The Arabs came to the tent an hour later. I gagged Bentham and gave him up to them bound, and in the dark they took him away, with the mule. His clothes I buried in the ground under my tent, and in the morning stamped the ground down and took the tent away." "And the chief of these Arabs? Give me his name," said the Basha. "Mallam Juzeed," replied Hassan. The Basha waved his hand to the soldiers and Hassan was dragged away. "I will send a soldier with you, give you a letter to the Sheikh of Beni Hassan, and he will discover the Room, if he is to be found in those parts," said the Basha to M. Fournier. Charnock spent the greater part of a month in formalities. He took the letter from the Basha and many other letters to Jews of importance in the towns with which M. Fournier was able to provide him; he hired the boy Hamet who had acted as his guide on his first visit, and getting together an equipment as for a long journey in Morocco, rode out over the Hill of the Two Seas into the inlands of that mysterious and enchanted country. CHAPTER XIX TELLS OF CHARNOCK'S WANDERINGS IN MOROCCO AND OF A WALNUT-WOOD DOOR