The lusty sun set the polished hides aglow, the burnished lance-heads a-glitter. The horses, fretted by sharp stirrups, tossed their silky manes, whisked their streaming tails. The wind got into the burnooses and set them flapping and billowing in creamy clouds; everything was in his favor. Ortho wheeled the head of his column left about, formed squadron line on the right and thundered past the Magazine, his shop-window troop nearest the spectators, shouting the imperial salute, “_Allah y barek Amer Sidi!_” A good line too, he congratulated himself, as good as any Makhzen cavalry would achieve in this world. If that didn’t work nothing would. It worked. A slave came panting across the parade ground summoning him to the powder house at once. The Sultan was leaning against the parapet, sucking a pomegranate and spitting the pips at his Grand Vizier, who pretended to enjoy it. The fringes of the royal jellab were rusty with brick dust from the ruins of Bel Abbas, which Mahomet was restoring. Ortho did obeisance and got a playful kick in the face; His Sublimity was in good humor. He recognized Ortho immediately. “Ha! The lancer who alone defied the Bou Khari, still alive! Young man, you must indeed be of Allah beloved!” He looked the soldier up and down with eyes humorous and restless. “What is your rank?” “Kaid Mia, Sidi.” “Hum!—thou art Kaid Rahal now, then.” He turned on the Vizier. “Tell El Mechouar to let him take what horses he chooses; he knows how to keep them. Go!” He flung the fruit rind at Ortho by way of dismissal. Ortho gave his long-suffering men a feast that night with the last ready money in his possession. They voted him a right good fellow—soldiers have short memories. He was on his feet now. As Kaid Rahal, with nominally a thousand cut-throats at his beck and nod, he would be a fool indeed if he couldn’t blackmail the civilians to some order. Also there was a handsome sum to be made by crafty manipulation of his men’s pay and rations. El Mechouar would expect his commission out of this, naturally, and sundry humbler folk—“big fleas have little fleas . . .”—but there would be plenty left. He was clear of the financial thicket. He went prancing home to his little house, laid aside his arms and burnoose, took the key from the negress, ran upstairs and unlocked the room in which the Arab girl, Ourida, was imprisoned. It was a pleasant prison with a window overlooking the Aguedal, its miles of pomegranate, orange, and olive trees. It was the best room in the house and he had furnished it as well as his thin purse would afford, but to the desert girl it might have been a tomb.