“But alas! while my comrade and myself were exchanging side-glances of mutual felicitation at such fair beginnings, Nemesis suddenly awoke to claim her due, and the serenity of our horizon was at once overcast by an unexpected and most unwelcome cloud. My readers are doubtless already aware that nothing was of higher importance for us than the most absolute incognito, above all in whatever regarded European origin and character. In fact, once known for Europeans, all intimate access and sincerity of intercourse with the people of the land would have been irretrievably lost, and our onward progress to Nedjed rendered totally impossible. These were the very least inconveniences that could follow such a detection; others much more disagreeable might also be well apprehended. Now thus far nothing had occurred capable of exciting serious suspicion; no one had recognized us, or pretended to recognize. We, too, on our part, had thought that Gaza, Ma’an, and perhaps the Djowf, were the only localities where this kind of recognition had to be feared. But we had reckoned without our host; the first real danger was reserved for Ha’yel, within the very limits of Nedjed, and with all the desert-belt between us and our old acquaintances. “For while Seyf was running through the preliminaries of his politeness, I saw to my horror, amid the circle of bystanders, a figure, a face well known to me scarce six months before in Damascus, and well known to many others also, now merchant, now trader, now post-contractor, shrewd, enterprising, and active, though nigh fifty years of age, and intimate with many Europeans of considerable standing in Syria and Bagdad—one, in short, accustomed to all kinds of men, and not to be easily imposed on by any. “While I involuntarily stared dismay on my friend, and yet doubted if it could possibly be he, all incertitude was dispelled by his cheerful salutation, in the confidential tone of an old acquaintance, followed by wondering inquiries as to what wind had blown me hither, and what I meant to do here in Ha’yel. “Wishing him most heartily somewhere else, I had nothing for it but to ‘fix a vacant stare,’ to give a formal return of greeting, and then silence. “But misfortunes never come single. While I was thus on my defensive against so dangerous an antagonist in the person of my free-and-easy friend, lo! a tall, sinister-featured individual comes up, clad in the dress of an inhabitant of Kaseem, and abruptly breaks in with, ‘And I too have seen him at Damascus,’ naming at the same time the place and date of the meeting, and specifying exactly the circumstances most calculated to set me down for a genuine European.