The March hare would have been a feeble comparison for Billy Hill\'s madness if Robert Falconer could have seen him that Saturday morning, that same Saturday on which Arlee was essaying her daring r?le, for Billy Hill was sitting in the sun upon a camp stool, a white helmet upon his head, an easel before him, and upon the easel a square of blank canvas, and in Billy\'s left hand was a box of oils and in his right a brush. And the camp stool upon which Billy was stationed was planted directly before the small, high-arched door of the Kerissen palace and in plain view of the larger door a few feet to the right.

It had all followed upon acquaintance with the one-eyed man.

Taciturn in the beginning and suspicious of Billy\'s questionings, that dark-skinned individual had at first betrayed abyssmal ignorance of all save the virtues of stuffed crocodiles, but convinced at last that this was no trap, but a genuine situation from which he could profit, his greed overcame his native caution, and through the aid of his jerky English and Billy\'s jagged Arabic a certain measure of confidence was exchanged.

The one-eyed man then recollected that he had noticed a Turkish officer and an American girl returning together to the hotel upon that Wednesday afternoon. He had stared, because truly it was amazing, even for American madness—and also the young girl was beautiful. "A wild gazelle," was his word for her. The man was Captain Kerissen. He was known to all the city—well known, he was—in a certain way. It was not a good way for the ladies. Yes, he had a motor car—a grand, gray car. (Billy remembered that the fatal limousine had been gray.) It was well known that he had bought it for a foreign woman whom he had brought from over-seas and installed in the palace of his fathers. Yes, he knew well where that palace was. His brother\'s wife\'s uncle was a eunuch there, but he was a hard man who held his own counsel and that of his master.

Could a girl be shut up in that palace and the world be no wiser? The one-eyed man stared scathingly at such ignorance. Why not? The underworld might know, but native gossip never reached white ears.

What was the best way of finding out, then? The one-eyed man had no hesitation about his answer.

A native must use his eyes and ears for the American. Through his subtle skill and the American\'s money the discovery could be made. The women servants would talk.

That was the way, Billy agreed, and quoted to the Arab his own proverb, "A saint will weary of well-doing and a braggart of his boasts, but a woman\'s tongue will never stop of itself," and the one-eyed man had nodded, with an air of resigned understanding, and quoted in answer, "There is nothing so great and nothing so small, nothing so precious and nothing so foul, but that a woman will put her tongue to it," and an understanding appeared to have been reached.

The one-eyed man was to loiter about the palace, calling upon the brother\'s wife\'s uncle if possible, and discover all that he could without arousing suspicion. And Billy determined to do a little loitering himself and quicken the one-eyed man\'s investigations and keep watch of Kerissen\'s comings and goings, and a donkey boy was hired by the one-eyed man to follow the Captain when he appeared in the street and report the places to which he went.

It was all very ridiculous, of course, Billy cheerfully agreed with himself, but by proving its own folly it would serve to allay that extraordinarily nagging uneasiness of his. If he could just be sure that little Miss Beecher wasn\'t tucked out of sight somewhere in the power of that barbaric scamp with his Continental veneer!

Meanwhile the Oriental methods to be employed in the finding out appealed to the young American\'s humor and his rash love of adventure. He was grinning as he sat there on that stool and stared at the blank canvas before him. He had felt the r?le of artist would be an excellent screen for his loitering, but he had done no painting for a little matter of twenty years, not since he was a tiny lad, flat upon his stomach in his home library, industriously tinting the robes and beards of Bible characters and the backgrounds of the Holy Land—this work of art being one of the few permitted diversions of the family Sabbath. Now he reflected that the scenes for his brush were decidedly similar.

With humorous interest he fell to work, scaling off the palace on his left, blocking off the cemetery ahead, and trying to draw a palm without emphasizing the thought of a feather duster. His engineering training made him critical of his lines and outlines, but when it came to the introduction of color he had the sensation of a shipwrecked mariner afloat upon uncharted seas.

The color that his eyes perceived was not the color which his stubborn memory persisted in reminding him was the actual hue of the events, and the color that he produced upon canvas was no kin to any of them. But it sufficed for an excuse, and he worked away, whistling cheerily, warily observant of the dark and silent fa?ade of the old palace and alertly interested in the little groups his occupation transiently attracted. But these little groups were all of passers-by, shawl-venders, package-deliverers, beggars, veiled desert women with children astride their shoulders, and the live hens they were selling beneath their mantles, and these groups dissolved and drew away from him without his being able to attract any observation from the palace.

But at least, he thought doggedly, any girl behind those latticed windows up there could see him in the street, and if Arlee were there she would understand his presence and plan to get word down to him. But he began to feel extraordinarily foolish.

At length his patience was rewarded. The small door opened and the stalwart doorkeeper, in blue robes and yellow English shoes, marched pompously out to him and ordered him to be off.

Haughtily Billy responded that this was permitted, and displayed a self-prepared document, gorgeous with red seals, which made the man scowl, mutter, and shake his head and retire surlily to his door, and finding a black-veiled girl peering out of it at Billy, he thrust her violently within. But Billy had caught her eyes and tried to look all the significance into them of which he was capable.

Nothing, however, appeared to develop. The door remained closed, save for brief admissions of bread and market stuff from little boys on donkey-back or on a bicycle, all of whom were led willingly into conservation, but none of whom had been into the palace, and though Billy pressed as close to the door as possible when the boys knocked, he was only rewarded with a glimpse of the tiled vestibule and inner court.

To the irate doorkeeper he protested that he was yearning to paint a palace court, but though he held up gold pieces, the man ordered him away in fury and spoke menacingly of a stick for such fellows.

Now, however cool and fresh it was in the garden that Saturday, it was distinctly hot in the dusty street, and by noon, as Billy sat in the shade beside the palace door, eating the lunch he had brought and drinking out of a thermos bottle, he reflected that for a man to cook himself upon a camp stool, feigning to paint and observing an uneventful door, was the height of Matteawan. He despised himself—but he returned to the camp stool.

Nothing continued to happen.

Travelers were few. Occasionally a carriage passed; once a couple of young Englishmen on polo ponies galloped by; once a poor native came down the road, moving his harem—a donkey-cart load of black shrouded women, with three half-naked children bouncing on a long tailboard.

Several groups of veiled women on foot proceeded to the cemetery and back again.

The one-eyed man sauntered by in vain.

In the heat of the afternoon the wide door suddenly opened and Captain Kerissen himself appeared on his black horse. He spurred off at a gallop, intending apparently to ride down the artist on the way, but changed his mind at the last and dashed past, showering him with dust from his horse\'s hoofs. The little donkey-boy, lolling down the road, started to follow him, crying out for alms in the name of Allah.

Billy stared up at the windows. Not a handkerchief there, not a signal, not a note flung into the street! In great derision he squirted half a tube of cerulean blue upon his canvas.

This, he reflected, was zero in detective work. It was also minus in adventure.

But one never knows when events are upon the wing. Almost immediately there came into the flatness of his bored existence a victoria containing those two English ladies he had met—in the unconventional way which characterized his meetings with ladies in Cairo—two days before.

The recognition was mutual. The curiosity appeared upon their side. To his horror he saw that they had stopped their carriage and were descending.

"How interesting!" said Miss Falconer, with more cordiality than she had shown on the previous occasion. "How very interesting! So you are an artist—I do a little sketching myself, you know."

"You do happen in the most unexpected places," smiled Lady Claire.

The English girl looked very cool and sweet and fresh to the heated painter. His impression of her as a nice girl and a pretty girl was speedily reinforced, and he remembered that dark-haired girls with gray-blue eyes under dusky lashes had been his favorite type not so long ago ... before he had seen Arlee\'s fairy gold.

"We\'ve just been driving through the old cemetery—such interesting tombs," said the elder lady, and Lady Claire added, "I should think you could get better views there than here."

By this time they had reached the easel and stood back of it in observation.

Blue, intensely blue, and thickly blue was the sky that Billy had lavished. Green and ri............