Next morning, when we started on our homeward way, there was a noise of firing in the village, and, coming round a shoulder of the hill in single file we saw Sheykh Yusuf seated on a chair against the wall of his house, and screened by a great olive tree, the slits in whose old trunk made perfect loopholes, blazing away at a large crowd of hostile fellahin. He used, in turn, three rifles, which his sons kept loading for him. He was seated, as we afterwards found out, because he had been shot in the leg. I was for dashing to his rescue, and Rashid was following. We should both have lost our lives, most probably, if Suleyman had not shouted at that moment, in stentorian tones: 'Desist, in the name of the Sultan and all the Powers of Europe! Desist, or every one of you shall surely hang!' Such words aroused the people's curiosity. The firing ceased while we rode in between them and their object; and Suleyman assured the villagers politely that I was the right hand and peculiar agent of the English Consul-General, with absolutely boundless power to hang and massacre. Upon the other hand, we all three argued with Sheykh Yusuf that he should leave the place at once and lay his case before the Governor. 'We will go with him,' said Suleyman to me, 'in order that your Honour may be made acquainted with the Governor--a person whom you ought to know. His property will not be damaged in his absence, for they fear the law. The heat of war is one thing, and cold-blooded malice is another. It is the sight and sound of him that irritates them and so drives them to excess.' At length we got the Sheykh on horseback and upon the road; but he was far from grateful, wishing always to go back and fight. We could not get a civil word from him on the long ride, and just before we reached the town where lived the Governor he managed to escape. Rashid flung up his hands when we first noticed his defection. 'No wonder that he is unpopular,' he cried disgustedly. 'To flee from us, his benefactors, after we have come so far out of our way through kindness upon his account. It is abominable. Who, under Allah, could feel love for such a man?' CHAPTER XXII THE CAIMMACAM Though the reason of our coming, the Sheykh Yusuf, had deserted us, we rode into the town and spent the night there, finding lodgings at a khan upon the outskirts of the place, of which the yard was shaded by a fine old carob tree. While we were having breakfast the next morning in a kind of gallery which looked into the branches of that tree, and through them and a ruined archway to the road, crowded just then with peasants in grey clothing coming in to market, Suleyman proposed that he and I should go and call upon the Caimmacam, the local Governor. I had spent a wretched night. The place was noisy and malodorous. My one desire was to be gone as soon as possible, and so I answered: 'I will call on no one. My only wish to see him was upon account of that old rogue who ran away from us.'