“Yes. At one o’clock I go with my friends very quietly to bathe in the stream beneath the wall near the mosque. We stay in the water for, perhaps, an hour, and when we come out we drink lagmi.” “What’s lagmi?” “Palm wine. Then at three o’clock I go to my home, mount upon the roof quietly with my wife and children, and sleep till dawn.” “And you do this for five months?” “For five months, Sidi.” “And—and your wife, Safti?” I felt that I was very indiscreet; but Safti is good-natured, and has bought quite a number of palm-trees out of his savings when with me. “My wife, Sidi?” “What does she do all the time?” “She remains quietly in my house.” “She never goes out?” “Never, except upon the roof to take a little air.” “Doesn’t she get rather bor⸺” The one eye began to look remarkably vague. “And you find five months of this life a sufficient rest in the course of the year?” Safti smiled at me with resignation. “I cannot take more, Sidi; I am not a rich Englishman.” “Well, Safti, you must make the best of your fate. It is the will of Allah that you should toil.” “_Shal-làh!_ I will take another coffee, Sidi.” “Larbi!” I called the Kabyle boy. _SMAÏN_ “When the African is in love he plays upon the pipe.” +Sahara Saying+. Far away in the desert I heard the sound of a flute, pure sound in the pure air, delicate, sometimes almost comic with the comicality of a child who bends women to kisses and to nonsense-words. We had passed through the sandstorm, Safti and I, over the wastes of saltpetre, and come into a land of palm gardens where there was almost breathless calm. The feet of the camels paddled over the soft brown earth of the narrow alleys between the brown earth walls, and we looked down to right and left into the shady enclosed spaces, seamed with water rills, dotted with little pools of pale yellow water, and saw always giant palms, with wrinkled trunks and tufted, deep green foliage, brooding in their squadrons over the dimness they had made. The activity of man might be discerned here in the regularity of the artificial rills, the ordered placing of the trees, each of which, too, stood on its oval hump. But no man was seen; no flat-roofed huts appeared; no robe, pale blue or white, fluttered among the shadows; no dog blinked in the golden patches of the sun—only the sound of the flute came to us from some hidden place ceaselessly, wild and romantic, full of an odd coquetry, and of an absurdity that was both uncivilised and touching. I stopped to listen, and looked round, searching the vistas between the palms. “Where does it come from?” I asked of Safti. His one eye blinked languidly. “From some gardener among the trees. All who dwell in Sidi-Matou are gardeners.” The persistent flute gave forth a shower of notes that were like drops of water flung softly in our faces. “He is in love,” added Safti with a slight yawn.