The Mena weekly star., 1913-05-08

fhS rainless skies, the ever-recurring suggestions of antiquity. His lively observation. his sense of the pictur- esque and the humorous. always close 10 the surface, gave him that singular impetus which makes man a prowler. This gift had made possible his suc- cess in old Bagdad Some years be- fore he had prowled through the nar- row city streets, had noted the wind ings, the blind-alleys, and had never forgotten. Faces and localities were written indelibly upon his memory.
 One rode to the bazaars, but walk ed through them or mounted donkeys. Ryanne preferred his own legs. So did Mahomed. Once, so close did he come that he could have put his two brown hands round the infidel's throat. But, patience. Did not the Koran teach patience among the higher laws? Patience. He could not, madly as he had dreamed, throttle the white liar here in the bazaars That would not bring the Holy Yhiordes to his hands. He must wait. He must plan to lure the man out at night, then to hurry him into the desert. Out into the des- ert, where no man might be his mas ter. Oh the Holy Yhiordes should be his again; it was written.
 The cries, the shouts, the tower of Babel reclaimed; the intermingling of the races of the world: the English. man, the American, the German. the Italian, the Frenchman, the Greek, the Levantine, the purple-black Ethiopian, the bronze Nubian; the yelled women. the naked children; all the color-tones known to art, but predominating that marvellous faded tint of blue, the Cairene blue, in the heavens. in the waters, in the dyes.
 Make way, o my mother!" bawled donkey-boy to the old crone ped ding matches.
 "Backsheesh! Backsheeshi" in the eight tones of the human voice. From the began, his brother, his uncle, his grandfather, his children and his ohildren's children. "Blacksheesh, backsheesh!"
 ITO the right" was shrilled into Ryanne's ear; and he dodged. A troop of donkeys passed, laden with tourists, unhappy, fretful, self-con- scious. A Iwater-carrier brushed against him, and he whiffed the fresh dampness of the bulging goat-skin. A woman, the long, black head-veil streaming out behind in the clutch of the monkey-like hand of toddling child, carried terra-cotta water-iar upon her head. The grace with which she moved, the abruptness of the col exchanges, caught Ryanne's rowing eye and filled 1t with pleasure.
 Dust rose and subsided, eddied and settled; beggars blind and one-eyed squatted in it, children tossed it in play, and beasts Of burden shuffied through it.
 The roar in front of the shops, the pressing and crowding of customers, the high cries of the merchants; the gurgle of the water-pipes, the pleasant fumes of coffee, the hardy loafers lolling before the khans or caravan saries; a yelled face at a lattice-win- dow; the violet shadows in doorway; the sunshine upon the soaring mosques; true believer, rocking and mumbling over his tattered Koran; gold and silver and jewels; amber and copper and brass; embroideries and rugs and carpets; and the pest of fleas, the plague of flies, the insidious smells.
 Rarely one saw the true son of the desert, the Bedouin- He disdained streets and walls, and only necessity brought him here among the polyglot and the polygon.
 Ryanne found himself inspecting "the largest emerald in, the world. worth twelve thousand pounds" which looked more like a fine hexagonal of onyx than 9 gem. It was one of the curiosities of the bazaars, however, ana tourists were generally round 1t in force. To his experienced eye it was no more than a fine specimen of emerald quartz, worth what any fool of a collector was willing to pay for it. From this bazaar he passed on into the next, and there he saw Fortune.
 And as Mahomed. always close at hand, saw the hard lines in Ryanne's face soften, the cynical smile become tender, he believed he saw his way to strike.
 Continued in Next Issue)