“We are as much entitled to our freedom as you are,” declared one of my hosts, whose green turban indicated that he could trace his ancestry back to Mahomet, “and we will win ours in the end, just as your people won theirs. We may be a strange people,” he added, reflectively, “but we are not so bad as we have been painted. The _howadji_ [strangers] condemn our religion without understanding it and preach to us another, which, so far as we can observe from its practices, falls far short of our own. Mohammedanism needs no defence from me, but I will tell you just one thing about it. If you were now to murder my brother I could not lay hands on you or harm you, for you have eaten of my salt, but not even Mahomet could make me cease to hate you in my heart. Does the Christian religion, of which the British are so proud, teach you that?” I confessed that it didn’t, so far as I had information or belief, and made my sincere salaams to his faith. If I am ever to become afflicted with any religious beliefs, I hope they will be those taught by Mahomet. When I finally started back to my hotel Ialla and her attendants were waiting for me in the alley, for it was not wide enough to be called a street. They started on ahead, but we had gone only a few short blocks when her four companions walked briskly away and she waited for me, in a shadow so deep that I at first thought she had entered one of the queer houses and my spirits fell, to be revivified a moment later when I almost ran into her. “How did your business turn out?” she inquired anxiously, as I bowed low before her. Her voice, which I had been longing to hear, was soft and clear, as well became her, and her radiant beauty shone forth through the darkness. “Thanks to your cleverness,” I replied, “it has turned out well.” “Then you are going to rescue my uncle,” she exclaimed delightedly. Her sparkling eyes flamed with excitement and, as if to seal the compact, she extended her hand, which I first pressed and then kissed. Then I slipped it through my arm and started to walk out of the shadow into the moonlight, and she accompanied me without protest.