Suddenly two servant girls rushed into the room exclaiming: "Sidi Mohammed is coming! Here is Sidi Mohammed!" The grandfather, the head of the family, was at the door, and great would be his wrath should he see his granddaughter learning music, and above all from a _man_. Fortunately the old gentleman, being somewhat infirm, could not quickly descend from his carriage although assisted by his two men-servants, so that by the time he made his appearance the music master was simply hidden away in a tiny inner room and the whole family assembled in the courtyard; ready with profuse salutations, welcomes, and kissing of hands, to conduct him to one of the principal apartments, _not_ that in which the Jew was imprisoned. I have often wondered how long the visit lasted, and whether the musician was as fortunate as myself in being soon able to beat a retreat. Yes! the people are ripe for education--but is there not a serious danger in giving them education and education _only_? Is it not to be feared that with minds enlightened to see the errors of Mohammedanism, they will cast off its bonds only to become entangled in the meshes of atheism and become a nation of "libre-penseurs," so that having escaped the rocks of Scylla they find themselves engulfed in the whirlpool of Charybdis? My second illustration represents a poor Arab woman entering a saint's tomb, over the portal of which is written: "He (God) opens the doors. Open to us (O Lord) the best door!" And with my Christian readers I would plead that they would do all in their power both by prayer and by effort, that while the doors of education and progress are being thrown wide to these Moslems, the best door--the door of the Gospel--may be opened also, so that they too may know the glorious liberty wherewith Christ hath made _us_ free. VI "NOT DEAD, ONLY DRY" "It is useless to plant anything: the earth is dead." "No, it is not dead, it is only dry." "But I tell you, it is dead. In summer the earth is always dead: see here." And the Arab who spoke stooped and picked up a rock-like clod, that he had hewn with his pickaxe from the trench at his feet. It looked dead enough certainly; the Algerian soil in August is much the same in texture as a well-trodden highway. But it is only waiting. "It is the very same earth that it is in winter," I replied; "all it wants is water, and water you must give it." With an Oriental's laconic patience, though all unconvinced, the man went on with the digging of his trench, and the planting therein of acacia clippings to make a new thorn hedge where it had been broken down. And with a new hope in God my own words came back to me as I turned away. "It is not dead: it is only dry." For of all the soils in the world our Moslem soil in Algiers seems the most barren, while friend and foe repeat the same words: "It is useless to plant anything: the earth is dead."