Two oil lamps flared in the little coffee-house. In one circle of yellow light two bearded Sheiks were playing dominoes with imperturbable gravity; the other lamp flickered over an empty table beneath which the thin, flea-bitten legs of a ragged urchin were showing in the oblivion of his tired sleep. In the shadow beyond sat a young American with a keen, impatient face, and a one-eyed Arab shrouded in a huge burnous.

"I make fine dragoman?" the Arab was saying proudly. "This is ver\' old coffee-house. Many things happen here, ver\' strange——"

"Yes, but I\'m sick of the doggone place," said Billy fiercely. "I can\'t sit still and swallow coffee any longer. Can\'t we start now?"

"Too soon—too soon before the time. You say ten? Come, we go next door. Nice place next door, perhaps—dancing, maybe."

There was noise enough next door, certainly, to promise dancing. The strident notes of Oriental music came shrieking out the open doorway, but as Billy stepped within and stared over the heads of the squatting throng, he saw no sinewy dancers, but only two tiny girls in bright colors huddled wearily against the wall. The music which was absorbing every look came from the brazen throat of a huge instrument in the corner.

"Lord—a phonograph!" thought the young man in disgust, resenting this intrusion of the genius of his race into foreign fields.

The squatting men, their dark lips parted in pleased smiles, were too intent upon the innovation to turn at his entrance, but the little girls caught sight of him and ran forward, begging clamorously, their bracelets clanking on their outstretched arms.

With a little silver he tried to soften the vigor of the one-eyed man\'s dismissal. "This cheap place—no good dancers any more," the Arab uttered in disgust. "New man here—no good. Maybe next door better—eh?"

But next door was only a flight of steps and a lone little doll of a sentinel, painted and hung like a bedizened idol. Only the dark eyes in the tinted sockets were alive, and these turned curiously after the strange young white man who had dropped a coin into her outstretched hand and passed on so hurriedly.

"I don\'t want any more of these joints," Billy was saying vehemently to his harassed guide. "It\'s dark as the Styx now—let\'s be on our way."

The street they were on was narrow enough for any antiquarian, but the one into which the Arab guide now turned was so narrow that the jutting bays of the houses seemed pushing their faces impudently against their neighbors. A voice in one room could have been heard as clearly in the one over the way. It was a mean little street, squalid and poor and pitiful, but it maintained its stripped dignities of screened windows and isolation. It was better not to wonder what nights were like in those women\'s rooms in summer heat.

The lane-like path stopped at a rickety sort of wharf, and at their approach a black head bobbed quickly up from a waiting boat. It was the little boy who had shadowed the Captain that day—reporting his arrival at the Khedivial palace—and he climbed out now and sat on the wharf, watching curiously while Billy and his guide bestowed themselves in the long canoe, and pushed silently away.

It was an eerie backwater in which they were paddling, a sluggish stream which moved between dark houses. Sometimes it scraped against their sides and lapped their balconies; sometimes it was held in check by walls and narrow terraces. For Billy the water between the dark houses, the mirrored stars, the unexpected flare of some oil lamp and its still reflection, the long windings and the stagnant smells held their suggestions of Venice for his senses, and he thought the business he was going about was very similar to the business which had brought so many of the gentry of Venice to sudden and undesired ends.

The flies were horribly thick here. They settled upon the faces and arms of the paddlers, totally unapprehensive of rebuff. Billy\'s flesh crawled. He finished the swarm with a ringing slap that brought a low caution from his guide.

Now the canal was wider and shallower. The houses receded, and a field or so appeared, and frequent walls hedged the way. Then suddenly the houses came down again to the water, and the ruins of old mosques and palaces lined the banks for a time; to be replaced by walls again. The windings were int............