“The lady who just honoured us with her attention. She wore Paris shoes, any way, and a rustling frill round the edge of her gown.” “I should think she has very good reasons for living out here, then,” was the unchivalrous remark of Mansfield, for the insult offered to Cyril had made his blood boil. “Now that I would call one of the hasty judgments of youth,” drawled Mr Hicks, and said no more until they arrived at the entrance to their prison, which proved to be a cave at the foot of the hill, approached by a low doorway almost buried in the sand. A man was sent to the village for spades, and the sand was shovelled away until a large flat stone, standing more or less perpendicularly, was laid bare. This rested on rough hinges cut in the rock, and opened inwards like a door. All was dark inside, but it seemed cool and airy. Mr Hicks struck a match. Furniture there was none, with the exception of various heaps of broken pottery and fragments of rock, and what seemed a series of colossal bookshelves lining the walls. “Look here, sheikh,” said the American, “you’ve got to give us food and lights, and some tent-cloth to sleep on, if you run this high-class hotel.” “What will the Princess say?” was the lugubrious reply. “What will she say when the Prince of the Jews speaks with her and tells her how badly you treated us?” “It shall be done, _Khawaja_,” and the sheikh gave the necessary orders, which resulted in the arrival soon afterwards of three native lamps, with a supply of oil, some fresh bread and a further provision of the detestable compound of dates, and three pieces of goat’s-hair cloth. Meanwhile, Mansfield had been laboriously bringing in sand, a spadeful at a time, thus forming a substructure on which one of the tent-cloths was laid to make a bed for Cyril. Then the door was shut, and the prisoners were left to their reflections. “They may call this place the house of the Lady Zenobia as much as they like,” said Mr Hicks aggressively, “but I’ll stick out that it was the Lady Zenobia’s burying-lot, no less.” “This place--a mausoleum?” asked Mansfield, with marked disgust. “I guess so. Look at those shelves--all empty, of course; but there’s a choice collection of miscellaneous remains in the room down the passage there, where the light comes in through a hole in the roof. The Arabs have rifled the place, you bet, and lugged the corpses into daylight that they might be sure of missing nothing. All mummied, of course, so you needn’t look so sick.” “But we can’t stay here!” cried Mansfield, in horror.