He pushed it toward me. I pretended to be interested in a wretchedly new and cheaply woven rug. I had to, to keep steadfast. I waved him off. "No--no; five francs--no more!" He hung up the bell and I started to go. He seized it and ran after me. "Here, mister--fourtin franc--give me!" "Five francs!--no more." "No, no, mister--twelve franc--las' price--ver' las' price. Here, see!" He jingled the bell a little. If he did that once more I was gone at any price. "_Five francs_," I said, with heavy decision. "I'll give you five francs for it--no more." I faced resolutely around--as resolutely as I could--and pretended really to start. "Here, mister--_ten franc--ten_! Mister--mister!" He followed me, but fortunately he had hung up the bell and couldn't jingle it. I was at least two steps away. "Eight franc, mister--please--I lose money--I make nothing--mister--seven! seven franc!" "Five--five francs." I called it back over my shoulder--indifferently. "Mister! mister! Six! six franc!" Confound him! He got hold of that bell again and gave it a jingle. I handed him the six francs. If he had only left it alone, I think I could have held out. Still, as I look at it now, hanging here in my state-room, and think of the long lonely nights and the days of sun and storm it has seen, of the far journeys it has travelled in its weary way down the years to me, I do not so much mind that final franc after all. XXIII INTO SYRIA I picked up a cold that rainy day at Ephesus. Not an ordinary sniffling cold, but a wrenching, racking cold that made every bone and every tooth jump, and set my eyes to throbbing like the ship's engines. I felt sure I was going to die when we arrived in the harbor of Beirut, and decided that it would be better to die on deck; so I crawled out and dressed, and crept into a steamer-chair, and tried to appreciate the beautiful city that had arisen out of the sea--the upper gateway to Syria. The Patriarch came along, highly elate. This was where he belonged; this was home; this was Phoenicia itself! Fifteen hundred years B.C. Beirut had been a great Phoenician seaport, he said, and most of the rare handiwork mentioned in ancient history and mythology had been wrought in this neighborhood. The silver vase of Achilles, the garment which Hecuba gave to Minerva, and the gold-edged bowl of Telemachus were all Phoenician, according to the Patriarch, who hinted that he rather hoped to find some such things at Beirut; also some of the celebrated Phoinus, or purple dye, which gave the tribe its name. I said no doubt he would, and, being sick and suffering, added that he might dye himself dead for all I cared, which was a poor joke--besides being an afterthought, when the Patriarch was well out of range.