The son of the Kazi having brought letters from Abyssinia, was shortly introduced by Hajji Kasim, own cousin to Izhak, and by far the most reasonable of the Tajura party. Being in the course of conversation quietly interrogated touching the cause of the Ras el Kafilah's continued irritation, he turned at once to his companion, and solemnly adjured him by the beard of the Prophet to answer conscientiously the following questions. "A head is ahead, is it not, all the world over?" "Of course," responded the descendant of the chief justice, "there can be no disputing that fact." "A tail, too, is a tail, or I am much mistaken," continued the logician, pursuing his thesis,--and this axiom was also unhesitatingly admitted as beyond all controversy. "Well, then," resumed Kasim, whose intellects had been sharpened by a pilgrimage to the shrine at Medina; "no Kafilah can possess two heads; and so long as Ali Mohammad, who is in fact the tail, continues these underhand attempts to usurp the authority vested in the brother of the Sultan of Tajura, our acknowledged head, matters can never go on smoothly." The old man was quietly reminded that the raw tobacco, which had given rise to so much heart-burning, bickering, and dispute, was the sole property of the British party, and that, with every deference to Izhak's supreme authority, some control might with propriety be conceded to the owners over their own wares; but that as to any interference in the quarrel for the Ras el Kafilah-ship, the thing was clearly impossible-- the business having already been fully discussed and arranged with due Danakil patience, by the Sultan, in some twenty tedious conferences with the camel-owners and chiefs of Tajura. Izhak, who had been listening to this conversation with a dark scowl upon his brow, now entered as if by accident, twirling his scanty locks, and beaming with smiles; proof of his restoration to good humour being immediately afforded in the extension of his right hand, not to perform the usual ceremony of reconciliation, but in view to the palm being filled with a sufficiency of Dr Ruddiman's Irish blackguard, to admit of indulgence in his favourite recreation.