Magin watched him. He did not catch the connection at first. He saw it quickly enough, however. In his pale translucent eyes there was something very like a flare. "Look out--or we shall go together after all!" "We shall go together, after all," repeated Gaston. "And here is your place in the sun!" Magin still watched, as the little flame flickered through the windless air. But he did not move. "It will go out! And you have not the courage Apache!" "You will see, Prussian!" The match stopped, at last, above the open hole; but the hand that held it trembled a little, and so did the strange low voice that said: "This at least I can do--for that great lady, far away." The peasant on the bluff, prostrated toward Mecca with his forehead in the dust, was startled out of his prayer by a roar in the basin below him. There where the trim-white jinn-boat of the _Firengi_ had been was now a blazing mass of wreckage, out of which came fierce cracklings, hissings, sounds not to be named. As he stared at it the wreckage fell apart, began to disappear in a cloud of smoke and steam that lengthened toward the southern gateway of the basin. And in the turbid water, cut by swift sharks' fins, he saw a sudden bright trail of red, redder than any fire or sunrise. It paled gradually, the smoke melted after the steam, the current caught the last charred fragments of wreckage and drew them out of sight. The peasant watched it all silently, as if waiting for some new magic of the _Firengi_, from his high bank of the Karun--that snow-born river bound for distant palms, that had seen so many generations of the faces of men, so many of the barks to which men trust their hearts, their hopes, their treasures, as it wound, century after century, from the mountains to the sea. Then, at last, the peasant folded his hands anew and bowed his head toward Mecca. THE GAY OLD DOG[9] [Note 9: Copyright, 1917, by The Metropolitan Magazine Company. Copyright, 1918, by Edna Ferber.] BY EDNA FERBER From _The Metropolitan Magazine_ Those of you who have dwelt--or even lingered--in Chicago, Illinois (this is not a humorous story), are familiar with the region known as the Loop. For those others of you to whom Chicago is a transfer point between New York and San Francisco there is presented this brief explanation: The Loop is a clamorous, smoke-infested district embraced by the iron arms of the elevated tracks. In a city boasting fewer millions, it would be known familiarly as downtown. From Congress to Lake Street, from Wabash almost to the river, those thunderous tracks make a complete circle, or loop. Within it lie the retail shops, the commercial hotels, the theaters, the restaurants. It is the Fifth Avenue (diluted) and the Broadway (deleted) of Chicago. And he who frequents it by night in search of amusement and cheer is known, vulgarly, as a loop-hound.