This is how I nearly missed my Yibir. My cook and I had been going through the weekly accounts. He accused me of eating twelve eggs and three pounds of meat every single day of my life, and I accused him of carelessness in his method of handling the truth, and of extravagance in managing my commissariat. One ever gets but little change out of a cook, and when mine proved he was an honest man, and that I was a glutton, to his own satisfaction and my stupefaction, it was a bad moment for Gulaid Abokr to choose to come to me to borrow money. He came and stood below my veranda, coughing to attract my attention. He did--but he would _not_ go away. "Sahib, I am in trouble, I _must_ see you." "Gulaid Abokr," I replied, "the trouble you are in now is nothing to that you'll find yourself in presently if you don't go right now and take that villainous-looking companion of yours with you right out of my compound." "I can't take him away, Sahib, he is a Yibir and is the cause of my trouble. I _must_ see you." I was so foolishly angry that I nearly fell over the veranda. I had barely recovered myself when I heard Gulaid say, "Sahib, I've just had a baby." It was really so funny that I had to forget the cook and my bad temper in a hearty laugh. "Come up here, you freak," I said, "and tell me all about it." He came. "Sahib," he said, "I've just had a baby boy, and the Yibir has come. I have not a rupee in the house: will you lend me four, please?" Now, thanks to the cook episode I was in a suspicious mood and not inclined to part with four silver rupees without proper investigation, so I called Mahomed the interpreter at once, together with Buralli, who came with several other uninvited guests, to assist in providing me with the following true _facts_. Even Buralli is prepared to take a divorce oath that they are true. The first Yibir that ever was, was a sorcerer, and used to say there was nothing God would not do for him, nor enable him to do. He lived ever so long ago, in the time of Sheikh Ishaak, a noble Arab who fled to Somaliland from Mecca six hundred years ago, and who is the founder of one of the most powerful Somal divisions. The Yibir did so many wonderful things that the Sheikh sent for him to come to a small hill between Berbera and Hargeisa, but nearer to Hargeisa than Berbera, and there the two men met. Said Sheikh Ishaak to the Yibir, "Is this true, all I hear concerning you, that there is nothing you cannot do?" "It is true," said the Yibir. "Now I am not disputing with you," said the Sheikh, "but I'd like to see a demonstration. Can you go through that hill?" "I can," said the Yibir, and he went into the hill and came out on the other side. The Sheikh was astounded, and said, "Let me see you do it again," and the obliging Yibir did it again.