The next individual in our caravan was of a very different kind and class,—a long, tall, delicate, thin man of some four-and-twenty years of age, with one of the most beautiful voices in speaking I ever heard. He was himself a Shereef, a nephew of the old doctor’s; and a man of absolute fearlessness in danger, and equal gentleness and sweetness of manner in time of peace. He never complained of cold or hunger, though we suffered much from both, but bore all the hardships of the journey, and they were many indeed, not only with every fortitude, but also without ever losing an opportunity to attempt to add to my comfort. As we trudged along the weary desert roads he would for hours together, with a voice that would be the fortune of a Member of Parliament, and gestures that an actor might spend years and never acquire, relate to me strange stories of the past, page after page of Moorish history and tradition, in Arabic as pure and as poetical as any that can exist. The very opposite was the old Shereef’s son, a boy of some twelve or thirteen years of age. Heavy in body and mind, he had neither the intellect to be amusing nor the inclination to be useful, and served no other purpose of advantage than to be the object of the black girl’s practical jokes instead of any other of us. There was, too, in our party the returning pilgrim, a devotee of the sect of Mulai Ali el Derkaui, as was apparent from his green turban and the string of large wooden beads he wore suspended round his neck. A strange quiet man he was, always ready to help us load our animals or pitch our one little tent, but seldom speaking; never missing the hour of prayer, and often himself bearing part of the load of his little donkey, on which he was carrying to his native village a few bars of rough iron to be forged into ploughshares. We saw but little of him: he was always a hundred yards ahead or behind, counting his beads as he came along; and often when we missed him altogether we could see away back along the road his figure, or its shadow, for his colour and that of his clothes corresponded too truly with the yellow sand, as he rose and fell in prayer. I was much struck by his quiet, patient, uncomplaining way. He didn’t belong to us, but travelling in the same direction, he joined our little caravan, and we made the journey together. I of all our party had some conversation with him, for kind as were they all to the solitary stranger, he was timid and retired. However, we often talked together as I trudged beside him, and he seemed to be a man of no little power of reasoning and thought. Often in discussing theological questions, and he would talk of nothing else, it became apparent that a battle was raging in his heart, a battle of common-sense against prejudice and fanaticism. He had travelled to Mecca and back, and his eyes had been opened, and he seemed to realise the narrow-mindedness of the school in which he had been brought up.