paroxysms of powder-play and spear-flourishing with which they celebrated the sheikh’s return. Portents began to multiply around Cyril. At one time it was a stray stork, called by the Arabs the father of luck, which stood meditatively behind him for some time, undisturbed by the eager whispers around; at another a scorpion, which had ensconced itself under one of his boots for the night. It left the marks of its claws on his finger when he took up the boot in the morning, but Mansfield killed it with a stone before it had time to turn round and sting him. Four days longer the march lasted, crossing a strip of desert more sandy, stony, sunny, hot, and thirsty than any passed hitherto. This pathless, waterless tract was the true defence of Sitt Zeynab, the real reason why neither Roumi nor hostile tribesman had ever succeeded in making his way thither. The Beni Ismail knew their desert as well as if it had been traversed by a high road, but they economised their stock of water and curtailed their halts as far as possible while they were passing through it. This added discomfort pressed with special severity upon those unaccustomed to desert travelling. Mr Hicks and Mansfield, riding on in the baking sun hour after hour, with dry mouths and parched tongues, were both heartily sick of the adventure; but neither of them breathed a word of complaint or remonstrance to Cyril. Nor--which was a far stronger testimony to their loyalty--did they even exchange murmurs with one another; their nearest approach to doing so was an occasional lament over the joys of civilisation. If a bath was Mansfield’s ideal of unattainable happiness, Mr Hicks’s was a sherry cobbler. His dreams, he averred, were haunted by the pleasant tinkle of the ice in the glass, and as he lifted the straw to his parched lips the thought would cross his mind that it was worth while to have a real thirst on, for the pleasure of quenching it; but at this point he invariably awoke. Cyril alone appeared unconscious of the fresh hardships of this portion of the journey. Riding by himself, he was nevertheless ready, when his companions addressed him, to exchange with them the grim pleasantries which suited the situation. It was clear, however, that his thoughts were not bounded by the present scene, and Mr Hicks hazarded the suggestion that his brain was evolving schemes of universal dominion. The Arabs viewed him with ever-increasing respect, and it was with genuine awe that the sheikh rode up to him one afternoon, and, pointing out a hill upon the horizon, the summit of which seemed more regular in form than those on either side, said-- “Behold, O Prince of the Jews, the house of Sitt Zeynab!” The response to the announcement was as alarming as it was unexpected. Cyril fell forward unconscious upon his horse’s neck.