Dawn found me staggering down into that friendly ravine which sheltered my camel. I was utterly exhausted, for I bore a burden, but triumphant, delirious with joy and rapture, because my burden was so sweet. You may question me of these matters, and I shall reply: As well as my cotton interests I have now another interest in the Delta--the lovely "Secret" of the Sheikh Ismail Ebn al As![D] [D] Readers of _Tales of Abû Tabâh_ will recognize Mizmûna, "The Lady of the Lattice," the story of whose recovery by the bereaved Sheikh has already been related. IV HARÛN PASHA I I will tell you this story (said Ferrier of the Egyptian Civil) with one reservation; comments are to be reserved for some future time. I can only tell you what I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears; I offer no explanation; I pass on the story; you can take it or leave it. Some of you will remember Dunlap--I don't mean Robert Dunlap, who is chief officer of the _Pekin_, but Jack Dunlap his cousin, the irrigation man who used to be stationed at Assuan. You remember the build of the beggar?--the impression of scaffolding his figure conveyed? I always used to think of him as an iron framework, and he had the most hard-bitten head-piece I have ever struck; steel blue eyes and a mouth that was born shut. The dash of ginger in his hair, complexion, and constitution made up a Scotch brew that was very strongly flavored. He came down to Cairo one spring, and a lot of us got together in the club--on a Sunday night, I remember, it was. The conversation got along that silly line; what we were all doing, and why we were doing it, what we had really intended to do, and how Fate had butted in and made sailors of those that had meant to be parsons, engineers of the poets, and tramps of the chaps who had proposed to become financiers. Well, we had traveled up and down this blind alley for hours, I should think, when Dunlap mounted on his hind legs and took the rug with the proposition that nothing--_nothing_--was impossible of achievement to the man of single purpose. Someone put up an extreme case; asking Dunlap how he should handle the business of the son of a respectable greengrocer who, with singleness of purpose, proposed to become king of England. He said it was not a fair case, but he accepted the challenge; and the way this junior greengrocer, under Dunlap's guidance, plunged into politics, got elected M.P., wormed himself into the confidence of the entire Empire by a series of brilliant campaigns conducted from John o' Groats to Van Diemen's Land; induced the reigning monarch, publicly, to advocate his own abdication; established a sort of commonwealth with his ex-Majesty on the board and Dunlap occupying a post between that of a protector and a Roman Cæsar--well, it was wonderful.