"You seem very confident of immunity." [Illustration: SHEIK AMUT BEN BUTLER, THE TERROR OF THE SANDS.] "Of a certainty," said the Sheik. "I'm depending on Queen Mary. She's an awful stiff one for the proprieties, you know, and when she hears the way you defied conventions and went journeying out into the desert without so much as a chaperon, if I know Mary, she'll say it served you jolly well right. Anyway, what's one of those countries you speak of got to do with it?" He gave her the point of a finger--slightly cigarette stained, but very stern. "You forget, hussy,--I am the Sheik Amut Ben Butler. I'm the Grand Monarch, the Monseigneur of this entire sand-patch--put that in a cigarette paper and smoke it! "There's another Sheik in these parts, one Abraham O'Mara who goes around as if he cuts some didoes until he hears I'm in the neighborhood and then, Allah behold him bolt for his simoon cellar! "Besides, he'll soon be going back to Ireland or Palestine now and I'll be taking over all his sandlots as well. So you can see for yourself what a grass-cutter I am. "Don't stand there shaking your sassy red curls at me or I'll get up to you, do you understand?" Verbeena gulped grandiloquently. The Sheik sneered at her violently. "See here," he said, "you'd have made a fine chorus boy but it was not as a chorus boy or any other kind I saw you in Biscuit. So shake those Reginald fixings and get yourself into something with fancy trimmings, something decolleté and dashy. I'm surprised to find you so prone to forget that you are a lady." "In Biscuit--in Biscuit? You saw me in Biscuit, you underbred loafer?" gasped Verbeena. "That cat you chased off the balcony fell on a brand new, very natty turban I was wearing as I passed the hotel." "It was then that I first saw you, cutey! And when I heard you were going to make a desert hike alone--well, here you are, little one, _mon chit_, hale and hearty if a bit high-strung, my sweet ukelele." "Love--love! You speak of love! 'Twas for a ransom you rifled me of my liberty and what not, you big, hulking rotter!" He regarded her scornfully. "As a man who gave up eighty-six cents American cash to Musty Ale for your possession--and this I did--shall you accuse me of kidnapping you for ransom?" "Then why--why--O, gosh, if only your hair and whiskers matched! But I know Spaghetti lied." "'Bout what?" "He said he didn't know of your ever having any other girl but me." "Well, naturally," the Sheik frowned dangerously, "Spaghetti knows better than to do any gossipin' while I'm gone. Still it is true, Verbie, that you are the first one I have ever taken caravaning. As for the others----" "The others! O, golly, golly me!" she sobbed. "Listen to him--the way he says it--the others--the others! Just like that!"