Bare, earthy settees are recessed in places in these alleys where a foot or two of extra space permits an addition without entirely blocking up the pathway. There a single person may repose in the cool of evening; or sit cross-legged with another, exchanging idle gossip, or hatching cunning schemes. Twisting and turning, portalled at points of advantage with a confusion of plank doors, these alleys lead an interminable distance. I find myself in the position of believing I am lost in a large city, and will never get back unguided to the point of setting out. I have been a score of times in Fachi. On the last visit, as on the first, I found myself at dubious turnings, enquiring of furtive den-dwellers, “Which way leads to the blue sky outside?” Can one credit this of a place no greater in area than a country village? It seems hardly possible; yet it is so, and it is chiefly the closely knit network of lane-slits that leads to this erroneous impression of great size. [Illustration: THE RAMPARTS OF FACHI] Nearly empty of people, the lanes are full of shadows and a sense of a thousand mysteries. Everywhere there are _shadows_: and on the day that I first entered Fachi I found myself repeating, under my breath: “It is a lost city, and its name should be, _The City of Shadows_. Shadows, always shadows, meet one at every turn in ever-changing phase. Weird, attractive shapes when cast from parts where unskilled, unplotted building has found a happy architectural result, or frowning nooks where lurk the sentiments of witchery or ghosts of the wicked dead. A few natives pass. They brush against me because of the narrowness of the lane. Close to them I see that their clothes are dirt soiled, their features hard and villainous. They hurry on and vanish out of the street with a single step aside. They have turned a corner or entered a dwelling. All the dwellings are entered directly from the alleys. The burrowing for shelter is increased in the dwellings; their floors are farther under the ground than the dusty lanes. (They have nothing to fear from rain and consequent flooding; for it does not rain.) A low, earthy parapet guards a few steps underground, and a tiny door, of hatchway size, through which only a stooping figure can pass. When there are no occupants at home, even during the day, these palm-plank, rudely anchored doors are closed and barred with the forbidding strength already described; as if neighbour trusted not neighbour. But the issue that is vital to Fachi’s scheme of defence is in the fact that, from within, at a moment’s notice, _the whole town can be barred and buttressed and placed under lock and key_.