About a month before the events just described a stranger arrived in the village, and the first man he met happened to be Mahkmoud. To him the new-comer told a plausible story of how he had worked for the eccentric sawerheen (white travellers) who were always digging amongst the ruins of the ancient temples. Having scraped together enough money to enable him to return to his native village near Wady Halfa, he was on his journey back, when he had fallen amongst thieves and lost all he possessed. He asked Mahkmoud to help him by giving him employment during the season of the crops. For a few pence a day he worked for Mahkmoud--irrigating the fields, watching his flocks of goats by day, and taking his turn in frightening off wild animals from the growing crops at night. He slept in a mud hovel with the goats, inside the sun-baked mud wall which surrounded Mahkmoud's dwelling-houses. He was a taciturn man, with an evil-looking countenance. He spoke to no one, and no one spoke to him. If mentioned in conversation, men referred to him as "ibn el kelp" (son of a dog), and mothers warned their children to flee from his path should they meet him, and on no account whatever to look at him, for he was a man possessed of "the evil eye" and would cast a spell over them. There was one man in the village, however, who knew this stranger, and the stranger knew him. Abdul and the goatherd had toiled together for many a weary day, with the iron ring on their ankles, in the ranks of the Discipline Company. By tacit consent they never openly recognised one another, and, as far as anyone knew, had never been seen to speak to each other. Both inwardly feared one another and wondered when the other would give him away. As a cat watches a mouse so did this stranger watch Abdul, and it was not very long before he had made himself acquainted with information for which it seemed that either Abdul, his enemy, or Mahkmoud, his master, might think it worth while to pay him handsomely. One night, when his employer was away keeping watch over his crops, he lay awake in his shed and heard footsteps steal silently past where he lay. Then he heard the door of the walled enclosure quietly opened and shut. Scenting that something was amiss, the goatherd stranger rose and silently went in pursuit. Seeing nothing, he hid himself amongst the mimosa bushes, which grew thick on both sides of the narrow path leading from the door to the river-bank. Presently, from his place of concealment, he beheld two forms walking up from the direction of the river towards the house, and as they slowly passed the spot where he lay hidden the watcher, by the light of the stars, recognised beyond a doubt who the couple were. "Allah is great, and Mohammed is His Prophet," murmured the stranger. "My enemy has now been delivered into my hands. I will demand from the dog the sum of twenty Egyptian pounds, and if he will not give them to me--then my employer knows all."