From the sandpile where Amut found himself sitting on a troubled head the Sheik began to reason that Verbeena was arrived. Counsel couldn't help him he very well knew. It was positively she. Because he heard her voice demanding: "How dare you? What do you mean by it? Answer me this instant! Who were you making off to see--Ayah or Beeyah or----" "Aw, what the dickens," said the Sheik Amut, with a half show of spirit. "All you caught me was a horse!" She slung him across her saddle as even once he had slung her and she frequently held him head down on the journey for as she said to him, this sends the blood to the head and he could the better therefore think of the atrocity he had planned. Now and then she would dip his head in the sand to brush up his repentance. That same night at home, the Sheik made a harrowing error. His diplomacy proved catastrophical. For he dug up a treasure bag and out of it drew a necklace of gorgeous, pallid greenstones, and dangled them before her eyes. "After all," said he, "it is you only I can ever love, Verbeena! Ah, Verbeena! You fascinating baby mine! Here--take it--this small token of the burning regard of my Sahara disposition!" Instead of graciously accepting she nearly drove his turban through the north wall of the tent. His head was in the turban. "I get your Oriental subtlety, you wild Eastern oaf!" cried Verbeena her red curls straightening and standing upright. "You think I'm a jade, do you?" On the Sahara has passed into song and story the family simoon which then blew across, in, out, about, over and under tent of Amut Ben Butler. CHAPTER X _Cous cous_ had given way to good old English bacon and eggs and marmalade on the breakfast table of the Sheik Amut Ben Butler. "Chief," said the Sheik half-heartedly to Verbeena, slipping a piece of bacon to his big, dangerous Persian hound that Verbeena was in the habit of kicking around so freely, "would you mind if I had a friend come and stay for a bit?" "What kind of a character may this be?" demanded Verbeena. "A literary light, one nearly as large as a moon. He sells an awful lot of books." "Of whom are you speaking?" asked Queen Verbeena readily inducting the atmosphere. "Robert," the Sheik paused because he was very sure of his grounds, "Hitchings." "Literary men," said Verbeena, "are usually terrible loafers and like late breakfasts but as to Mr. Hitchings I am agreeable. I am fully confident as regards Mr. Hitchings, I don't mind saying. He is always interesting. I think it was reading his works which started me on this trip." "It rejoices me to have you so inclined," said the Sheik. "And Bob will be pleased."