'I can't tell you how it happened, but after very small cups of very black coffee and a pousse café, in the officer's room, of genuine kirschwasser and good curaçoa, I was mounted on a bay horse; there was a dapple-gray alongside of me; and running ahead of us, to clear the way, the officer's _sais_ afoot, ready to hold our horses when we halted. We were quickly mounted and off like the wind, past turbans, flowing bournouses, tarbooshes, past grand old mosques, petty cafés, where the faithful were squatting on bamboo-seats, smoking pipes or drinking coffee-grounds, while listening to a storyteller, possibly relating some story in the _Arabian Nights_; then we were through the bazaars, all closed now and silent; then up in the citadel, and through the mosque of Yusef; then down and scouring over the flying sand among the grand old tombs of the Mamelukes and of the caliphs; then off at break-neck speed toward the Mokatamma mountains, from a rise on the lower spur of one of which we saw, in the shadow of the coming night, the Pyramids and the slow-flowing Nile. 'Again we were in Cairo, and now threading narrow street after street, the fall of our horses' hoofs hardly heard on the unpaved ways, as we were passing under overhanging balconies covered with lace-work lattices. As it grew darker, our _sais_ preceded us with lighted lantern, shouting to pedestrians, blind and halt, to clear the road for the coming effendis. '_Halte la!_ 'My foaming bay was reined in with a strong hand, I leaped from the saddle, and found the _sais_ at hand to hold our horses, while we saw the seventh heaven of the Koran, and by no means _al Hotama_. 'With a foresight indicating an old campaigner, the officer produced a couple of bottles of sherry from the capacious folds of the _sais_' mantle, and unlocking the door of the house in front of which we stood, invited me to enter. Two or three turns, a court-yard full of rose-bushes, and an enormous palm-tree, a fountain shooting up its sparkling waters in the moonlight, a clapping of hands, chibouks, sherry cooled in the fountain. 'Then, in the moonlight, the gleam of white flowing garments, the nervous thrill breathed in from perfumes filling the evening air; the great swimming eyes; the kiss; the ah!--other bottles of sherry. The fingans of coffee, the pipe of Latakiah tobacco, the blowing a cloud into dreamland, while Fatima or Zoe insists on taking a puff with you. 'But as she said, '_Hathih al-kissah moaththirah_, which, in the vernacular, is. 'This history is affecting,' so let us pass it by. We finished those two bottles of sherry, and if Mohammed, in his majesty, refuses admittance to two Peris into paradise, because they drank sherry that night, let the sins be on our shoulders, WE are to blame. * * * * *