When it is remembered that the native quarters of these towns in the edge of the Sahara are frequented by savage desert tribesmen who know little and care less about civilisation and the law, is it to be wondered at that time and time again these unprotected girls are done to death in the little rooms up the steep, dark stairs for the sake of the gold which they display so lavishly as part of their allurements? During my stay in one of these Algerian towns an Arab, stealthily coming up behind an Ouled-Naïl as she was returning one night from the dance-hall through the narrow, deserted streets, drove a knife between her shoulders and, snatching the little fortune which hung about her neck, fled with it into the desert. But the arm of the French law is very long, reaching even across the sand wastes of the Great Sahara, and months later, when he thought all search for him had been abandoned, the fugitive felt its grasp as he sat, cross-legged, in the distant bazaars of Wadai. After that came the trial and the guillotine, for in Algeria, as in the other lands which they have conquered, the French have taught the natives by such grim object-lessons that punishment follows swift on the heels of crime. Now, if that same crime had been committed fifty miles to the eastward, across the Tunisian frontier, the murderer would, in all likelihood, have gotten off with thirteen months in jail—that is, if he was caught at all. For, though the regency of Tunisia is French in pretty much everything but name, it has been deemed wise to maintain the fiction of Tunisian independence by permitting the Bey a good deal of latitude so far as the punishment of his own subjects is concerned, his ideas of justice (_la justice du Bey_ it is called, in contra-distinction to _la justice française_, which is a very different sort of justice indeed) usually working out in a fashion truly Oriental. In Tunisia all death sentences must be confirmed by the Bey in person, the condemned man being brought before him as he sits on his gilt-and-velvet throne in the great white palace of the Bardo. In the presence of the sovereign the murderer is suddenly brought face to face with the members of his victim's family, for such things are always done dramatically in the East. The Bey then inquires of the family if they insist on the execution of the murderer, or if they are willing to accept the blood-money, as it is called, a sum equivalent to one hundred and forty dollars, which in theory is paid by the murderer to the relatives of his victims as a sort of indemnity if he is allowed to escape with his life. If, however, he does not possess so large a sum, as is frequently the case, the Bey makes it up out of his private purse. Nine times out of ten, if the victim was a woman, the blood-money is promptly accepted—and praise be to Allah for getting it!—for in Africa women are plenty but gold is scarce. In case the blood-money is accepted the murderer's sentence is commuted