The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1897-11-01
(Chapter II continued.)

N0%ASN~@NN
I met the American at intervals during
the next six days. We did not often
speak, but as we passed in the streets
he alone, / always with my loquacious
intarpreter-I observed with dread the
change that the shadow of death hanging
over q mans head can bring to pass in his
face and manner He grew thin and sal
low and wiid-eyed, nervous and gloomy
and morose. One day he stopped me,
and said. II know now what your Buck
shot Foster died of, land then he went on
without another word.
But about ten days after our first meet
ing in the slave market he stopped me
again, and said, quite cheerfully, "He
has gone home-I'm satisfied of that
now"
THANK Godr' answered, involuntar-
lily.
"Ah," he said with a twinkle of the
eye. who says that n man must hang VI
has humanity on the peg with his ha5 in
the h ospital hall when he goes to be a
surgeon? If the poet Keats had got over
the first shock to his sensibilities he
might have been the greatest surgeon Of
his day"
q You'll be more careful in the future, u
l said, mot to cross the fanaticism Of
these fanaticsf'
He smiled and asked If knew the
ISS4
it.
at is the greatest in Morocco" he
said. 1.-the Moors say the inner cour,
stands on eight hundred pillars. don'i
believe them, and l mean to see for my
self
I found it useless to protest, and he
went his way laughing at my blancheC
and bewildered face. THAT man,"
thought sis fit to be the hero of TRACE
dy, and he is wasting himself on g
farce
Meanwhile, l had shadow over nv
own life which would not lift. Thai
letter which l had received from home
at the moment of leaving Tangier had
haunted me throughout the journey, its
brevity, its insutticiency, its delay, and
above all its conspicuous omission of all
mention of our boy had given rise to end.
less speculation. Every dark possibility
that fancy could devise had risen before
me by way of explanation. I despised
myself for such weakness, but self-con-
tempt did nothing to allay my vague
fears. The child was Ill; knew it; ]
felt it; could swear to it as certainly
as if my ears could hear the laboured
breathing in his throat.
Nevertheless, I went on; such did my
philosophy do for me. But when I got
to Fez I walked straightway to the Eng-
lish post office to see if there was a letter
awaiting me. OF course, there was no
letter there. l had not reflected that l
had come direct from the port through
which the mails had to pass, and that if
the postal courier had gone by me on
the road I must have seen him, which l
had not
L was ashamed before my own con
seriousness, but all the same the post
Office saw me every day. Whatever the
direction that took with my interpreter
it led towards that destination in the
end. And whatever the subject of his
ceaseless gabble-a very diarrhoea of
words-it was forced to come round at
last to the times and seasons of the mails
from England. These were bi-weekly,
with various possibilities of casual arri-
walls besides.
Fee is noble city, the largest and
finest Oriental city / had yet seen, fit to
compare in its own much different way
of beauty and of splendor with the great
cities of the West, the great cities Of the
earth, and of all time; but for me it's at
fractions were over-shadowed by the
gloom of my anxiety. The atmosphere of
an older world, the spirit of the East, the
sense of being transported to Bible times,
the startling interpretations which the
Biblical stories were receiving by the
events of.every day-these brought me no
pleasure. AS for the constant reminders
of the presence of Islam every hour, at
every corner, the perpetual breath of
prayer and praise which filled this land
that was corrupt to the core, they gave
me pain more poignant than disgust.
The call of the mooddin in the early
morning was daily agony. slept three
streets from the Karueein minarets. but
the voice seemed to float into my room in
the darkness, and coil round my head
and ring in my ears. Always I was
h. R,.-@ \ <,ff hn 10
rian "Allahukabar, or If / awoke in the
silence and thought with q feeling of re-
lief, lit is over; have slept through it,,
the bowling wall would suddenly break
in upon my thanksgiving.
There was just one fact of life in Fee
that gave me a kind of melancholy joy.
AT nearly every turn of a street my ears
were arrested by the mult1tudinous
cackle, the broken, various-voiced sing
song of children's school. These Moor
ish schools interested me. They were the
simplest of all possible institutes, con-
sisting usually of rush-covered cellar,
two steps down from the street, with the
teacher, the Taleb. often half blind old
man, squatting in the middle of the floor,
and his pupils seated about him, and all
reciting together some passages of the
Koran, the only text book OF education
One such school was close under my bed
room window; heard the drone of it as
early as seven o'clock every morning, and
as often as I went abroad stood for
moment and looked in at the open door
way. A black boy sat there with bas-
l1et for the aims of passers-by He was
"a bright-eyed little fellow, six or seven
years Of age, and he knew one English
phrase only. Come on he would say,
and hold up the basket and smile. What
pathetic interest his sunny face had for
me, how he would cheer and touch me,
with what strange memories his voice
and laugh would startle me, it would be
pitiful to tell.
Bear with me, was far from my own
darling, was in q strange land. was a
weak man for all that L was thought so
strong, and my one besetting infirmity
more consuming than a mothers love-
WAS preyed upon by my failing health,
which in turn was proving upon it.
And If the sights of the streets brought
me pain, or pleasure that was akin to
pain, what of the sights, the visions, the
GOID