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“The little, little, little jackal howls,” he said, sententiously, metaphorically, “but—tell me—will my old buffalo die therefore?”

And, while Hector laughed at the simile and the princess looked from one of the two men to the other, smiling, very much with the satisfied air of a hostess who has introduced two congenial souls to each other, he continued:

“Doubtless Rivet-Carnac saheb is fifteen devils—and a pig. But we—we of the North …”

“We are sixteen  devils—without as much as the pig's smell!” softly interrupted Hector to whom the half forgotten lore of bazaar jests and bazaar quips and slang was returning with every minute.

“Good, by the teeth of God!” exclaimed the older man, hugging the Englishman to his thick chest. “Thou art a man after my own heart—a twister of words! A turner of neat phrases! And—an honest man! For only an honest man can twist words for the right purpose! Thou hast a good head on thy shoulders—”

"And a good head has a thousand hands,” suggested the princess.

“Rightly said, rejoicer of hearts! A thousand hands—and each bearing a gift or a sword for Tamerlanistan! But, to return to Rivet-Carnac, to return, by the same token, to the jackal—and the pig, there may be no passport for Hector Wade. Yet—what need will there be of passports and talk and babble of passports to a young prince of the Gengizkhani clan, returning to his own land, vouched for by myself, a respectable and wealthy man and a member of the

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 Legislative Council of the Calcutta Municipality, decorated, deservedly, with the Star of the Indian Empire? A young prince, furthermore, who travels in the retinue of the ruling princess of Tamerlanistan! The jackal—and the pig—will bow their filth-scabbed necks. And the British Raj will also bow—for Central Asia is Central Asia …”

“And the Russian squints down from the North!” smiled Hector. “I understand!”

“As I knew thou wouldst! And now, follow me, young heart of my old heart, and”—running a sly hand over the other's flannel-clad shoulder—“we'll change these foreign clothes of yours into a dress more befitting a prince of the Gengizkhani.”

Three hours later, with the sudden young sun of the tropics splintering out of the east and all Calcutta awakening and sitting up to its daily round of abusing itself, the Government, and the weather. Hector Wade was sitting in a low victoria drawn by a brace of squealing, shaggy, rat-like, up-country ponies. He was dressed as became a rollicking, rich young Central Asian prince come to Calcutta to see the sights, to buy useless goods and, perchance, get drunk on foreign wine; from immense, black Persian lamb cap to yellow leather slippers with coquettishly upturned toes, from richly embroidered waistband, with the hilt of the ancient blade showing grimly above it, to open work silk socks in hopeful cerise, from the foppish sprig of rose-geranium behind his left ear to the great, flat-cut canary diamond that twinkled on his thumb. By his side sat the Princess Aziza Nurmahal in a

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 traveling sari of gray- and green-striped muslin, the soft flower of her face “veiled against the inquisitive glances of this stinking Southland,” to quote Mehmet Iddrissy Khan who had bid them good-by on the threshold of his house in the Colootallah.

They were followed by another roomy carriage that held a dozen of the princess' chattering, giggling, betel chewing servants under the command of Mahsud Hakki, a huge, crimson-turbaned Nubian eunuch who performed his office with a great deal of pompous dignity and without the slightest sense of humor—which latter failing had no effect whatsoever on the servants, who talked to each other and, when the carriage pulled up at the railway station, to their mistress, with all the startling, democratic familiarity of the Orient; too, with all the primitive indelicacy in regard to matters physical of that same Orient.

Talking loudly and pointing shameless and decidedly grimy fingers, they mentioned, in Hector's plain hearing, that he—“Al Nakia” they called him and the Englishman hunted in vain through his Persian and Behari vocabulary to find what the word meant—would be a fairly good-looking man, only:

“Thy nose is too thin, like the rawhide whips the Tajik caravan men use to spank their lean camels' lean buttocks, and thy belly is like a flattened purse!” remarked a toothless, withered hag who had the princess' jewels in her care; while a grizzled, gnarled old Persian woman, who was entrusted with Aziza Nurmahal's compact silver-and-enamel traveling water pipe, said, passionlessly, as one stating a fact known to all the world:

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“If, when I was young and my heart had never a crack, a man such as thou, Al Nakia, had whispered words of passion in my ear, I would have told him to first fill his gullet with rich meats, and then I would have said to him …”—something decidedly improper which sent everybody, including the princess and half-a-dozen stray Calcutta natives of various castes and complexions, into fits of riotous, Asiatic laughter; and Hector himself joined—was rather glad of it, in fact, for it proved that these people had accepted him as one of their own, that to them he was not the saheb who must be kowtowed to in public and cruelly, mercilessly derided and parodied in private.

Then a wave of excitement, inside the station, while they squabbled with the railway porters and guards and ticket punchers over baggage and ice and bedding and hubble-bubbles and baskets of food and goglets of water and a number of mysterious, strongly scented packages, which the railway officials declared could under no circumstances be stowed away into the “te-rain, the valuable property of the honorable saheb-log's railway company—no, no!—under no conditions whatsoever!” while the Tamerlani servants swore by all the Saints of Shia Islam and by a variety of rather more worldly oaths that, come what may, everything would be stowed away where they could see it.

“For we know well you thieving, lousy Southern piglings—you eaters of unclean abominations—you cursed worshipers of a flower and a ring-tailed monkey! You could steal food from between our lips, and our insides would be none the wiser! Away, spawn of leprous gutter rats, indelicate, especially unbeautiful,

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 and lacking in refinement! This is a princess from the North traveling in state with her own people—a pukka princess—and not a sniveling, unimportant Maharanee from the South. Away!”

“It is against regulation seventeen, paragraph eight!” cried a Babu railway clerk, brown faced, agate eyed, very fat and oily, and clad in white gauze which, considering his fantastic bodily contours, gave him a grotesque and not at all decent appearance. “Regulation says that …”

And he was promptly and vituperatively told what to do with the regulation, with the book which included it, the saheb who had written it; and when, in a magnificent flight of Bengali imagination, the Babu swore by Shiva and Vishnu and Brahm that the Viceroy himself insisted on this particular rule in regard to baggage being carried cut to the letter, the keeper of the princess' jewels told him, in a stage whisper, that, the very next time she came to Calcutta, she would call on the Viceroy and make him eat stick!

Hector, meanwhile, had been talking to Aziza Nurmahal who, in answer to his question, replied that Al Nakia was a Tartar word, the aboriginal language of Tamerlanistan, and that it meant “The Expected.”

“Expected—by whom?” puzzled Hector.

“But surely thou knowest—why—” She seemed a little surprised. “Expected—according to the ancient prophecy! Expected—to seal the wooing of swords!”

“More mystifying, unintelligible wooing of swords stuff!” thought Hector, while the princess complicated matters yet more by saying:

“These servants can be trusted. They were my

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 father's slaves. They know all about thy blade”—touching its hilt where it protruded from Hector's waist shawl—“and, too, about the other blade!”

“The other blade!” thought Hector. “As if this one wasn't enough.”

Then, with a loud voice:

“One thing is sure. I shall have to stop this incipient racial war if we intend to take the train.”

He gave a few rapid, decisive orders to both the railway officials and the servants. The latter triumphantly piled all the baggage, including a screeching, mangy parrot in a rickety bamboo cage which the pipe woman had bought the last moment from a grinning, splay-footed jungly-Bhil, into a first-class compartment, very much to the disgust of its occupant, a majestic Anglo-Indian lady with a Wellingtonian beak who decided to write a letter about it to the Times of India as soon as she reached her husband's hill station. Everybody went aboard, the princess in one compartment with one woman servant and the eunuch who, immediately, pulled down the rattan window shades tight, the rest of the servants in a second compartment, and Hector himself in a third, alone but for the company of one of the princess' people, a red-faced, stony-eyed Tartar who at once squatted on his haunches, at Hector's feet, stuffed his huge mouth full with finely cut pan and promptly fell asleep.

Fifteen minutes earlier, the Eurasian station master had shouted himself hoarse with:

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“All aboard the te-rain—for Lahore, Rawalpindi, and the North!”

Fifteen times he had blown his shiny, official silver whistle.

Fifteen minutes it had taken to solve the quarrel between the railway people and the Tamerlani; fifteen more to rescue some of the former from the hands of a party of ruffianly, drunken Rajputs whom they had tried to overcharge.

And yet another fifteen minutes elapsed before the train finally got under way with a wheezy cough.

For this was India, this was the East, to whom all Time, including railway time tables, also including the eternities, is only a matter of yawn and stretch and shrug, and to whom hurry is an ungentlemanly pastime of Western barbarians.

On then, to the North!

Through the stark, swollen, heat-scorched yellowness of Bengal, with fleeting glimpses of blue-garbed natives tilling the fields and patient buffaloes turning the water wheels and once in a while a squat, shimmering city seen vaguely through the delicate tracery of the trees!

A night and a day and another night, during which Hector saw nothing of the princess who, since there were Christians and Hindus and Eurasians, foreigners all, aboard, was respecting the proper customs of purdah and harem, of veil and woman's seclusion under the Nubian's jealous eyes, but who sent him frequent, joyful, hopeful messages through the servants who brought him food … while the train

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 rolled out into the Indian desert, between white, rush-tipped hillocks, with the fantastic, red granite mountains of Rajputana stabbing the far horizon with twisted peaks.

A strange land, a motley land, which Hector had not seen since he was a child. A land of too much color, gold and heliotrope and lake and purple, picked out with glaring white high lights, nicked with sulphur yellow and glaucous green, and edged with chocolate brown and luminous blues.

But Hector Wade had no eyes for the landscape. For—was it impulse? Was it instinct—or imagination?

He did not know. Did not even try to analyze.

He only knew that a great, portentous voice was calling to him across the distance, from the North beyond the snow-bound Afghan mountain passes, and it called with the language of the past—and the future … with the steely, swishing sob of crossing blades.

A puissant and compelling force surged through him. It came from the outside, springing, nevertheless, from something of which he was a living, throbbing part, suffusing him with deep, triumphant joy … and it was, suddenly, with an almost physical shock, that he realized how with every mile the West, England, his old life, his old interests, his old customs and reactions and prejudices, were slipping away from him … they—and Jane Warburton! The girl who was dearer to him than the dwelling of kings!

He loved her—and now he had lost her, for ever, and his heart was like a house without any light, where

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 his desires and passions wandered about, like lonely children lost in the dark …

“Next stop Rawalpindi!” came the Eurasian railway guard's strident voice. “Change trains there for Peshawar and the North!”

Oh, well—Hector shrugged his shoulders, as if already the fatalistic East had submerged his soul—it had to be.

His old life was dead, and his new life had begun. And it must be untrammeled—by the past, the likes and dislikes, the endeavors and ambitions of the past.

Untrammeled even by—the love of the past?

No, no! His love could never be of the past. It was of the present, the future, all shoreless eternity. His love was a living thing, would ever be a living thing, come what may.

Why, he couldn't do without Jane. She was the breath of life itself to him and …

Hector Wade kicked himself in the shin.

“I am a silly ass,” he remarked, at a little wayside station, to a crimson necked vulture that was sitting on a low wall, flopping its dirt-gray wings and making improper noises in its scrawny throat. “Hector Wade is dead and forgotten. There is only Al Nakia left!”

“Al Nakia!”

He repeated the word aloud, and the Tartar servant sat up and rubbed his sleepy eyes.

“Didst thou call, my lord?” he asked.

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about the time when Hector and his party were changing trains for the Northern frontier at Rawalpindi Junction, beset by a crowd of natives in every conceivable state of ruffianly raggedness and imploring in every known and some unknown dialects to be hired as porters, guides, dog boys, sweepers, grooms, butlers, cooks, and tailors, Sir James Rivet-Carnac sat facing Mr. Ezra W. Warburton and the latter's daughter in their suite at the Hotel Semiramis, busy with a small cup of coffee and a large glass of brandy, while the American was busy with a large cup of coffee and a small glass of brandy—thus both gentlemen somehow illustrating the divergent characteristics in matters bibulous of the two branches of the Anglo-Saxon race.

Sir James beamed. Sir James smiled. Sir James talked softly. Sir James waved pudgy, courteous hands.

For not only had the dinner been perfect, from turtle soup to an odorous Kashmere curry with fresh vegetable chutney, but, furthermore, he was a sensible man, who respected wealth, and knew that Mr. Warburton represented powerful Anglo-American financial interests.

“Of course, my dear sir,” he said. “There will be

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 no trouble about passports for yourself and your daughter. No trouble either about the journey—anything my department can do to make the trip comfortable—anything at all—pray command me!”

He lit a fresh cigar.

“I have already said a word or two to the local agent of the Ameer of Afghanistan,” he went on, “and you will be passed straight through that country. On the other hand …”

He coughed, and was silent for a few seconds, collecting his thoughts.

He was in a quandary.

For he was a servant of that intricate and extremely complicated machinery for civilization, progress, and the blessed average decencies called the British Empire, that world-flung organization which spreads like a fine-mesh net over the whole globe and in which, through logical consequence, there are many currents and undercurrents, often one government department giving orders or recommendations completely at variance with those of another, every bit as important, department.

And, while he had received instructions from the India Office to put himself absolutely at the disposition of Mr. Warburton and to make that gentleman's trip to the North as easy and pleasant as possible, another department, closely connected with the Home Office in London, had asked him, quite sub rosa and quite decisively, to see to it that the American's journey to Tamerlanistan should be delayed at least two or three months.

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Sir James did not know, could not know, that it was through the subterranean influence of an eccentric Cockney millionaire, Mr. Preserved Higgins, that the latter instructions had been sent him. But he did know that, unless he walked a delicate tight-rope between the two departments, his dearest wish would not be realized at the next royal birthday honors: namely, a change from Sir James, Kt., to Sir James, Bart.

Gently, therefore, he proceeded to hedge.

“Mr. Warburton,” he said, “I understand that Tamerlanistan is rather in an unsettled condition just now. The old Ameer died, you know …”

“Yes. I know.”

“Well—we have no consular representative there—it makes it rather awkward for me …”

“Don't worry,” rejoined the financier. “I have my own man up there—Babu Chandra.”

“A Bengali?"

“Yes.”

“Can you trust him? Not that I am trying to impeach the man's honesty, but …”

“I understand. Sir James. I know the sort of reputation the Babus have hereabouts. But my particular Babu is all right.”

“I am so glad,” murmured Sir James—and lied.

Presently, he tried a different method.

“Mr. Warburton,” he asked, “is your business in Tamerlanistan very pressing?"

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The other was a cautious man.

“Why do you ask?” he countered, bluntly.

“Oh—please—do not misunderstand me. I am not trying to pry into your affairs. But, whatever they are, I would like to know if they are very pressing—if there is any great hurry about them.”

“A month or two makes no difference.”

“Good!” exclaimed Sir James and, when the American looked up with quick suspicion, he immediately proceeded to that operation which is vulgarly known as drawing a herring across one's trail.

“Mr. Warburton,” he purred, “you must forgive my—how shall I put it …?”

“Butting in—that's what we call it back home in America!” chimed in Jane, to her father's horror.

“Thank you, my dear lady.” Sir James was not at all embarrassed and, turning to her father:

“We feel rather responsible for you, don't you know.”

“Awfully kind of you.”

“Not at all, not at all. But—there you are. With prominent international men like yourself—the—oh—the responsibility …”

“What are you driving at?” demanded Mr. Warburton, again becoming suspicious.

“Only that this is the very worst season of the year to travel about India. Cholera outbreak in Lahore, you know, and the heat and the flies and all that. Wait till after the monsoon …”

“But—”

“This brittle heat,” the other went on, smiling at

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 his own shrewdness and thinking that right here he was going to even his score with Miss Warburton, “is positively deadly to delicate complexions.”

“That settles it,” said Jane, serenely. “We'll wait till after the monsoons, shan't we, dad?”

Mr. Warburton agreed. After all, he decided, there was no hurry and it would be better for him to wait until he had word from the Babu Chandra, and he had found out that Hector had left his hotel and, presumably Calcutta, so that he needn't be nervous in regard to his daughter.

And so Sir James returned to attend to some late work at his office—where, a few days later, he frowned at a report telegraphed by one of his sub-agents stationed at Peshawar, near the border of Afghanistan, which said that no person resembling Mr. Hector Wade had crossed the border or tried to; only the bi-weekly caravans for Kabul and Kandahar that filed through the Khybar Pass, and some independent Afghan, Sart, and Hindki traders with proper passports. Furthermore, for a while to come, it would be impossible for said Hector Wade to get through the Khybar or any other of the minor Northwestern Province border stations as, because of some threatening trouble with the tribesmen, nobody would be allowed, until further orders, to travel out of Peshawar for the North, with the exception of the reigning princess of Tamerlanistan, to whom British, Afghans, and warring tribesmen had granted the courtesy of free conduct.

She was accompanied by her retinue and her cousin, the young prince Al Nakia.

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By this time, the latter, alias Hector Wade, was becoming familiar with at least an inkling of what he was supposed to accomplish after he would have reached Tamerlanistan, though he was as ignorant as ever as to the special reasons why Fate, with Ali Yusuf Khan and an ancient blade playing Deputy-Fates, had chosen him as the instrument.

The princess party arrived in Peshawar on a Monday, early, just as morning came with the young sun gilding the carved struts of Kabul Gate, spiking a crimson diadem across the face of the lower Himalayas, shooting a glimmering, yellow wedge of light down the length of the Khybar Pass, straight into the stony entrails of Afghanistan.

They were evidently expected, for carriages met them at the station, and they drove rapidly, through that boisterous northern city which guards the gateway of India and seal's the southern end of the Khybar Pass that points straight, like a pistol, at the heart of Asia; through the whirling, choking dust that rose in clouds from the dirty streets; past crowds of ruffianly, swaggering border men, to the house of a wealthy Tamerlani tradesman who dealt in salt and hides and tea; and, shortly after their tiffin of mutton stewed in honey and seasoned with asafoetida, licorice water, sticky sweetmeats, and unripe melons had been served in their host's pavilion, trouble came with a bearded Tajik courier's official, peaked, black turban showing above the scraggly mellingtonia in the yard, and his throaty call: “A visitor! A visitor for the princess!”—and, a minute later, the visitor arrived, atop a smelly, furry camel, yelling, cursing, using the

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 rawhide whip unmercifully, the animal trampling down flowers and shrubs and small trees in haste to reach the pavilion—where Aziza Nurmahal rose from her cushions and thrust the amber mouthpiece of her hubble-bubble which she was smoking into the hands of the nearest servant.

“Bismillah!” she exclaimed.

She was excited, expectant, her flaring, nervous nostrils quivering like those of a blooded mare.

To his dying day Hector Wade laughed at the memory of that scene.

For, when the visitor hove in sight, he saw that it was not a man, but a woman. Past the Biblical age she was, lean as a panther, haggard, berry brown. The cavernous mouth that shouted loud, guttural greetings of “''Salaam Aleikhoom! Salaam Aleikhoom! Yah Sidi! Yah Bibi! Yah Moslima!''” showed two lonely teeth crimson with betel juice; a few wisps of gray hair escaped from beneath the immense, mannish fur cap that tilted at a rakish angle over her left brow; her wizened body, clad in a robe of coquettish rose-madder silk sadly torn and mud blotched, was perched audaciously between the humps of the saturnine, Hebraic camel; on the hand that plied the raw-hide twinkled an immense off-color diamond in a hammered lead setting.

“Down! Down on thy knees, O lust-scabbed spawn of a hyena and a bloated she-devil!” she addressed her mount that gave a wicked, grunting snarl, turned its swanlike neck with the evident intention of biting its rider's scrawny hip, bent its forelegs suddenly double

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 like a jack-knife, and shot the visitor neatly out of the saddle and directly at the feet of the princess who between laughter and tears, picked her up and hugged her to her breast.

The older woman broke into a hectic torrent of speech; a mad mixture of extravagant terms of endearment—“Little pink-and-blue sweetmeat!” she called the princess, “little melon seed of delight! Little ivory moon of much sweetness! O thou soul of my soul! Thou blood of my liver!”—and bewailings of that cruel, stony Fate which had forced her, a woman of respectable years, respectable life, respectable ancestry, and virginal innocence, to leave the “fat and warm security of the harem, to launch myself upon the bitter, bitter waters of adventure and fatigue and extremely bad food, to cross the chilly mountain peaks of Afghanistan, to have rough, swine-fed Kabuli dogs crack low jokes to the detriment of my nose, to wrestle the many, weary miles with a stinking dromedary whose father was a wart and whose mother a most improper smell!”

“Ahee—ahoo—ahai—and ten thousand first-class devils!” she shrilled, giving herself a violent blow across her flat, heaving chest. “And all because of that great and most evil grandson of a cockroach, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, governor of the western marches!”

And she called the governor a name that reflected fully as much her own morality and upbringing as on the other's female relatives.

On she raced in a mad, lashing jumble of words, while the servants, who saw Hector's amused astonishment,

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 told him that the woman was Aziza Nurmahal's old nurse, Ayesha Zemzem, a Bakhtiari hill woman from the western wilds; too, gave him a richly colored and extravagantly embroidered account of how the princess had raised her to the rank of regent, with the honorable title of Zil-i-Sultana, “Shadow of the Queen,” and had afterwards reduced her to her former, humble position, because she had been in favor of granting "concessions” to the saheb-log.

Hector whistled.

“Concessions! Is that the rub in Tamerlanistan?” he thought.

For he was familiar, through the number of Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Chinese he had known in London, with that phase of chronic misunderstanding between the Orient and the Occident. He rather sympathized with the former and had always held that it is not altogether altruistic to “carry the white man's burden” with the help of cheap, stout native labor, cheaper raw material, and one hundred per cent yearly profits on every pound sterling invested.

He was not a business-man. Eton and the army had spoiled him for that. But, beneath all his other, at times slightly erratic and unexpected characteristics, he had a great deal of plain, straight English commonsense, and he decided that if, as it seemed, he was going to have a voice in the affairs of Tamerlanistan, he would think twice before he advocated the granting of any “concessions.”

By this time Ayesha Zemzem had finished her tale, had been petted and scolded and wept and laughed over

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 by her mistress, and was now squatting in a corner of the pavilion, puffing noisily at a large, soothing hubble-bubble; and the princess dismissed her servants, turned to Hector, and told him what had happened in Tamerlanistan—what had sent the old nurse hurrying across desert and mountains.

It appeared that Wahab al-Shaitan, the negro executioner who, with the title of Rawan-i-Sultana, “Killer for the Queen,” was regent during her absence, had done well, comparatively speaking. He had ruled with an iron hand and, at first, everybody had obeyed him.

Then, several weeks earlier, a spy had brought the news that Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, governor of the western marches, had again commenced intriguing with the Persian border ruffians whom he was supposed to keep in subjection. They were led by one Hajji Musa Al-Mutasim, a renegade Mecca Arab who had drifted east into Persia and was known, and unfavorably known, by the nickname of Al-Ghadir, “The Basin,” because of his enormous appetite and corresponding bulk, which latter did not prevent him, followed by his wild borderers, from being a genius at frontier warfare. He was here to-day and there to morrow, dancing out of the bush, striking swiftly and mercilessly, and always at the very place where he was not supposed to be; and when the villagers could not pay the tribute which he demanded, he gave their huts to the flames and carried off their women and children and cattle.

Too, he and his band were levying toll on the caravans that passed through the Darb-i~Sultani, “The

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 King's Highway,” on which Tamerlanistan depended for a great deal of its foreign trade; and now it appeared that the governor, instead of using his soldiers and police against the raiders, was sharing in their enterprise, including the profits.

The regent had sent a summons to the governor to present himself immediately at the court of Tamerlanistan.

But Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, guessing, and rightly, that his arrival at court would be practically simultaneous with his beheading, had decided to do nothing of the kind, and had instead sent an insulting message, which said:

It was the calm insolence, the serene brutality of the message which brought Hector up standing.

Not that he was the least bit in love with Aziza Nurmahal; for he loved Jane Warburton, and his instincts

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 were decidedly not polygamous. But he was one of those men in whom the rising tide of woman's demand for complete emancipation had not scotched that natural and decent impulse called chivalry—and let us say, in parenthesis, that this same instinct, when used by the wrong type of man, makes for licentiousness and domineering arrogance.

“Desire is in his nostrils, is it?” he exclaimed, “and he wants the bridal robe to be of green? Well”—he fingered the hilt of the ancient blade—“I'll see to it that there'l'l be another desire in his nostrils presently …”

“And he shall also long for another color!” shrilled the old nurse, coming out of her trance. “White! White! The calm white of the shroud when we stick his stinking corpse into an unhallowed grave! I like thee, Al Nakia! I like thee well, Son of the Swords!” and she jumped up and gave Hector a noisy smacking kiss.

The princess, too, was excited and happy.

“Thou art master henceforth, Al Nakia!” she said. “Thy orders shall be carried out.”

Hector inclined his head. Here at last was what he had been yearning for—a chance at actions and deeds.

“Good!” he said. “We'll start for Tamerlanistan at once.”

And, half an hour later, with the princess' servants forgetting for once their Oriental disregard of that vulgar western convention called Time, they were under way, after a short, vindictive, but decisive wrangle with the hairy, goatish-smelling Pathan guides

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 over rupees, annas, and pice, out of Peshawar, and up through the defile of the Khybar Pass where, on every hill-top, behind every rock and tree, squatted diminutive Goorkha soldiers in rifle green, guarding the bottle-like entrance of Britain's eastern Dominion.

Afghanistan—the North—Central Asia!

With every mile of the jagged road, Hector felt that this remote northern land was claiming him, welcoming him, rising about him in a stony, enormous tide which was trying to wipe from his brain all memory of home, of England, of the rolling, yellow Sussex downs.

Through the velvety gloom of the nights, through the crass white sunlight of the days, through the gaunt shadows of the volcanic hills which flanked the road and which danced, exuberantly, like hobgoblins among the dwarf aloes and pines and acacias, through the rhythmic click-clacketty-click of their Mawari stallions' dainty feet, there sounded to him the clarion call of a greater, deeper, older duty, duty more compelling than the mere “chance” at a new life, a new career which he had longed for ever since that night when he had shouldered his first brother's guilt and disgrace, when he had been kicked from the company of decent men as a card-cheat.

His groping, subconscious mind seemed on the very threshold of one of those splendid moments when, suddenly, a great light flashes down the hidden, choked passages of the soul, and makes visible for a fleeting second the secret yearnings of past lives—lives dimly remembered.

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All this land—this far, northern land—was part of him.

He felt it, knew it.

And he was keyed up to a sort of grimly happy expectancy when Kabul jumped away from the coiling fogs of the hills, like a thick slab of opaque jade set into the frame of the sugarloaf-shaped mountains and incrusted here and there with rose pink and creamy yellow and crimson where the transplanted damask roses of Isfahan were making a brave fight against the chilly North.

They did not linger at Kabul, though the servants clamored for the warmth, not to mention the gossip and opium, of the bazaars.

Ishkashim was a shimmering maze of flat, white roofs; and they pulled into Balkh, silvery as lepers with the dust of the road, traded their horses for lean racing camels, which had a profusion of blue ribbons plaited into their bridles as a protection against the djinns and ghouls of the desert, filled their saddle bags with slabs of grayish, wheaten bread and little hard, golden apricots, and were off again, crossing the Great River at the shock of dawn, the princess at the head of the cavalcade, by Hector's side.

On!

North—then West!

Toward Tamerlanistan!

And, in the dusty, whirling wake of their camels' padded feet drifted whisper, gossip, babble, information; not as scientifically transmitted as the information which zums along the copper telegraph wir

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 es of the Occident, but quite as reliable and to the point.

It started with a word of admiration in the servants' hall of the Tamerlani merchant who had entertained Aziza Nurmahal in Peshawar:

“A most proper man is Al Nakia, the princess' cousin. Strong and quick and courageous as the male elephant whose cheeks are streaked with passion. There is talk of trouble and mutiny in the western marches of Tamerlanistan, and Al Nakia has sworn a great oath on his blade that he will make the rebel governor eat seventy-seven times seventy-seven pecks of dirt! Such were his exact words!”

That night, one of the merchant's grooms repeated it to a nautch girl of his acquaintance in an opium shop near the Kashmere Gate, adding:

“Al Nakia has been long away from his own country. He has been in Belait—in Europe—and has become a Frank in everything, even as to his language. For I attended to his Rorse, and when he saw that the saddle girth had rubbed the stallion's back raw, I heard him talk English under his breath. 'Damn' he said—twice”—and he continued, with a certain haughty negligence—“I also know the language of the saheb-log. 'Damn—Hell—jolly corkin'!' I know a great deal.”

All this the nautch girl retailed, an hour later, over a cup of brandy flavored with honey and rose water, to a Goorkha soldier who, the next morning, mounted guard in the Khybar Pass and told it to a friend of his, a rough Mahmoud tribesman with oily locks and a hawkish, predatory face.

Thus the tale took wings, spanning streams and

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 forests, vaulting crumbling basalt ridges and twisted mountain peaks, until, finally overtaking the princess cavalcade and traveling well ahead of it, it reached the ear of Babu Bansi who, just then, was on the point of leaving Tamerlanistan and going to Bokhara to meet his eccentric employer, Mr. Preserved Higgins.

Bansi winked a large wink at nothing in particular.

“Al Nakia”—he said—“'The Expected' Says 'Damn!' Is strong and quick and courageous! By Kartikeya Chaurya-Vidya, God of the Golden Spears! But this is jolly rippin' interesting!”

Whereupon he sent a cabalistic telegram to a mysterious address in Bokhara—a telegram which was opened by a Cockney millionaire who turned to the young, nervous Englishman with him with the words: “Theres a whole lot o blinkin' trouble in the wind; we got to go South straight orf!” a telegram which caused the local manager of the Cable Company a fruitless and head-splitting searching through half-a-dozen cable code books—and told his body servant that he had changed his mind.

He was not going North, to Bokhara, but West, toward the Persian border.

“But, Babu-jee! expostulated the servant, “the raiders are out in force, cutting purses—also throats; and the governor of the western marches is said to be in league with them, and …”

“Peace, O son of loathly begetting!” purred Bansi. “I was not born yesterday. I can hear the grass grow and the fleas cough!”

And he mounted his horse and, followed by the trembling servant, was off at a spanking pace and,

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 several days later, after many changes of horse, his fat body perspiring profusely, his eyes swollen and red with the dust of the road, but his brain as chillily cunning as ever, he pulled up at the headquarters of the governor of the western marches, who received him like a long-lost brother, just about the time that the princess and her party were drawing within sight of the capital of Tamerlanistan.

They had been riding hard; for, three times during the last days of the journey, messengers had come to them, sent by the executioner-regent, with words that the situation was growing worse, that even the capital was seething, with subterranean rumors of rebellion. He had taken the precaution of putting Koom Khan and Gulabian in jail, besides cutting off a number of less important heads. His staunchest support was Nedjif Hassan Khan, the governor of the eastern marches, doubtless for the simple reason that the governor of the western marches was his twin brother and worst enemy.

But there was danger. Let the princess hurry.

And they had hurried.

Hector's camel was ready to give up. Her head was bowed on her heaving, lathering chest, and she breathed with a deep, rattling noise. But he bent over her neck, lifting her with every stride, and keeping her nose straight to the road.

Then, late one afternoon, the princess reined in and pointed.

“Tamerlanistan!” she said.

And they rode on again, while the camels grunted

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 and squealed, and while the dark mass that loomed up on the horizon was becoming more and more distinct with every minute, presently splitting into streets and houses; and a pleasant city it was beneath the rays of the dying sun; with carved, massive mosques and low, flat-roofed houses buried in flaunting gardens; with tall, keen-domed palaces, flushing scarlet and gold, gigantic water reservoirs, time-riven arches spanning crooked streets, square towers incrusted in high relief with figures of beast and man, and high above it all, descending in an avalanche of bold masonry, like a vision in a dream, the great palace of the Gengizkhani …

A noisy town. For, in the East, every one talks, and talks in extremes, either in a gloomy whisper or in a raucous scream, with the very voices of horse and camel and donkey seeming to be pitched in a soprano key; and high above the hubbub, just as the cavalcade passed through the East Gate, rose the melodious voice of a muezzin chanting the call to prayer from a minaret:

“Hie ye to devotion, O all ye faithful! Hie ye to salvation! God is most great!”—and the immediate, answering mutter, from balcony and shop, from coffee house and from the gutter itself:

“Here I am at Thy call, O Allah! Here I am at Thy call!”

“Here I am at Thy call!” echoed Aziza Nurmahal, softly, while Hector stared straight ahead.

“Tamerlanistan! The palace of the Gengizkhani!” he whispered, with an odd little catch in his throat;

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 and something like a shudder passed through him, something that touched the fringe of a forgotten mystery, ancient, magnificent, transcendent.

He had reined in his mount with his left hand while, instinctively, as if searching for encouragement, his right felt for the hilt of the blade—the blade that was responsible for all this twisted, mad adventure.

Then he shook off the dim, whirling thoughts. He spurred the camel's lean flanks.

On! By the side of Aziza Nurmahal who was smilingly returning the throaty salutations of the Tamerlanis who came running down the streets, out of houses and mosques and bazaars, to meet her: tradesmen and peasants and artisans; too, sabre-rattling, hook-nosed, swaggering nobles. And Hector noticed that many of the latter gave churlish greetings, and that some of them even stalked past, straight backed, insolently looking the other way, without a sign of recognition for their sovereign princess.

They continued their way through the main road of the city, and up a steep, stone-paved ascent that led to the chowk, the outer courtyard of the palace.

There they dismounted and walked, past files of soldiers and servants and courtiers, through a huge gate studded with brass spikes, through another court yard crammed with human life, and into still another which was lifeless except for the whir and coo of hundreds of blue-winged pigeons.

The Princess drew a foot-long, skewer-like key from her waist shawl, opened the door, and motioned Hector to enter.

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“Home!” she said, softly.

And, in the flash of an eyelid, the impression, rather the profound conviction, came to Hector that this strange, fantastic city was his Home indeed—his Home, every bit as much as the crumbling old Tudor Castle beyond the seas in smiling Sussex.

And he passed through the door, like a man sure of his way.

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“Hansua ke hiyah, khurpa ke git!” remarked Wahab al-Shaitan, the chief executioner, to Mahsud Hakki, the head eunuch, meaning by the gliding, purring words that it was “the wedding of the sickle, but that all the song was for the hoe”—an extravagant Oriental simile immediately understood by the other, who untucked his fat legs from beneath his fat haunches, rose, and stretched himself.

“Yes,” he said. “It is Al Nakia who rules. It is Al Nakia who gives forth pearls of wisdom and justice and shining equity, judiciously tempered by the swish of the sword when it is red. It is Al Nakia whose eyes fatten the cattle and frighten the wolves. Yet is it Aziza Nurmahal whose praise is babbled in bazaar and mosque and mart. Al Nakia wants nothing except—he told me so himself when I asked him—the personal satisfaction of knowing that he is doing a measure of good, that he is achieving a measure of success. He said so—by Allah!”

A great, naïve wonder overspread Wahab al-Shaitan's plum-colored features.

“Last night,” he said, a little hesitatingly, like a man who does not expect to be believed, “the princess

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 offered to raise him to the rank and title of Itizad el-Dowleh, 'Grandeur of the State,' since it is evident that Hajji Akhbar Khan will never return from the far places. But Al Nakia refused. He wants no higher title than his present one: Sadr Azem, 'Prime Minister.' Strange, isn't it?”

“Strange indeed. He is the government. He controls the finances, the palace household, and the army. He works like a beaver and sleeps like a hare. He is a deer in running, a tiger in pouncing, a hawk in clutching. And he does not intrigue for the throne. He does not ask the princess' hand in marriage. He does not even want money or fame. Strange—as strange as the ancient prophecy of the swords!”

And Mahsud Hakki shook his kinky poll.

Yet, had the two Nubians known or, knowing, been able to understand, the strangest aspect of the whole affair was less the actuality of Hector's success as de facto ruler of Tamerlanistan than the contrast of this success with his, of course hypothetical, failure had Fate thrown him to a different corner of the earth.

For, had he taken his father's quite well-meant suggestion and gone to Canada or South Africa, he would by this time have become a, including all that the term implies—he would have been crushed beneath the wheels of that juggernaut like so many other of Britain's younger sons who leave home “for a reason.”

But it is a racial, almost a historical, phenomenon that these same younger sons who go under in the far places colonized by their own countrymen, make

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 often supremely good when circumstance forces them to live and work amongst either inferior peoples, as in Africa, or a people of a different civilization and culture, as in Asia.

Perhaps it is because they feel that, amongst foreign races, it is up to them to uphold the traditions of their own country; perhaps there is at the back of it some scientific or quasi-scientific reason not yet discovered, dissected, and codified ad absurdum by those enthusiastically illogical and intolerant atheists who call themselves biologists.

But the fact of it remains; and Hector Wade was a living example.

Quite untrammeled by the clogging traditions of Tamerlanistan's past, yet careful not to rough-ride over any of those customs and prejudices which, in the swing of the centuries, had become endowed with an almost religious sanction, he gripped the helm of the ship of state and proceeded to navigate it amongst the swirls and shoals and eddies of the turbulent political waters.

Soberly English, he began with the department of the treasury. English, too, in his willingness to compromise instead of dragooning, he retransferred the treasury to the capable hands of Gulabian, whom he released from prison. English, finally, in his constructive though rather cynical belief that the best preventive against corruption is money, he raised the Armenian's salary to such a high figure that it would not have paid him to accept bribes. The result was as he had expected: Gulabian became a faithful supporter

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 of the new administration. Within a few weeks, the taxes were again commencing to flow in; not, of course, with the methodical regularity as during the life-time of the old Ameer and the stewardship of Hajji Akhbar Khan, but sufficiently smoothly to keep the country out of bankruptcy; and in this, as in the other administrative departments, it was the primitive simplicity of Tamerlanistan which permitted Hector to accomplish in a few weeks what, in a more hectic, a more highly organized, a more complicated European country, would have taken him as many months or years.

Next he turned his attention to the household, the palace. Many of the customs there went against his grain. But he said to himself that the Orient is the Orient, and that the harem, the intimacy of the house and family, is absolutely inviolable. Nor did he fancy himself in the rôle of a reformer. He was tolerant enough to admit that that which is right in London may well be wrong in Pekin, and vice versa, and so he attempted no changes in the household, with the single exception that he did away with the multitude of spies, telling tales about each other. Otherwise he left the intimate palace affairs in the hands of the old nurse.

When it came to the reform of the army, he not only used the military lessons he had learned in the Dragoons and at war college, but also the sober psychological wisdom—though he himself referred to it as horse sense—he had acquired through his human relations with the troopers in his half-squadron.

He remembered chiefly the case, including the

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 morals of the case, of one Bill Dockeray, a Liverpool wharfinger who had donned the blue and silver of the Dragoons in a moment of patriotism not altogether untainted by three fingers of gin which a pal had put in his fifteenth glass of beer—to regret his martial decision promptly and profanely as soon as he had discovered that the King's Shilling, a gay tunic, and the regimental band tuning up “The Dashing White Sergeant” were not all there was to life in barracks; that there was, also, drill and route marching and sobriety—and discipline.

Bill Dockeray had decided that he was a “free-born bloody Englishman,” had emphasized this assertion by flattening out a lance-jack's aquiline nose, and had been sent to “clink” for three days.

Which had not chastened him in the least.

On the contrary, he had grown steadily worse, until the colonel had become bored with the monotonous, almost weekly:

“Private William Dockeray, C Squadron, two days for insubordination!” and, after a particularly mutinous outbreak had threatened him with brigade court-martial.

It was then that Hector Wade had interfered.

“Let me have a talk with Bill Dockeray,” he had asked the colonel.

The latter had shaken his head.

“You'll never make a soldier out of him,” he had said.

“It won't do any harm to try, sir.”

“All right. Please yourself.”

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And Hector had gone to the guard-house and interviewed the lawless trooper.

“Look here,” he had said, “you'll get jolly well kicked out of the service in disgrace.”

“A fat bloomin' lot I'd care,” had come the sneering reply.

“But you will also get two years' hard labor,” Hector had continued—which put a different complexion altogether on the matter and made the argument much more persuasive.

“You're in for it,” he had said, “either jail—or you behave yourself and stay with the colors. Why, man, the army isn't so bad. Of course you have to do what you are told. So have I. So has the colonel. So has everybody.”

“I 'ytes the army,” Bill Dockeray had insisted, stubbornly, aggressively.

“Take some interest in your work,” Hector had replied. “Make the best of it. Why, there must be something about the service that you like. Let's see if we can find it between us.”

And, after fifteen minutes' careful and tactful questioning, he had discovered that the lawless recruit took quite a little interest in farriery, his father having been a veterinary in the Midlands—with the ultimate result, that, half a year later, Private Bill Dockeray had become Farrier Sergeant William Dockeray, had been heard to speak about the honor of the “bloomin' old rag,” meaning the Union Jack, with a great deal of proprietary pride, and had severely manhandled one Bert Simmonds, trooper, for having

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 said in canteen that all “them orficers are lousy, bleedin', cocky swine.”

Now Hector used practically the identical tactics with regard to Koom Khan, the ex-commander-in-chief, whom Wahab al-Shaitan had put in jail during his term of office.

He visited him there and found him in decidedly bad humor. But he said to himself that this man who glared at him out of hasheesh reddened eyes without a word in answer to his courtly greeting, was an Oriental and, by the same token, a man hard to manage yet easy to inspire; a man, moreover, who preferred a certain subtle brutality to all the logic in the world and believed profoundly that casuistry was the final essence of ratiocination.

Wherefore he studied him as he might an exotic and nauseating beetle, not sure whether he should crush it under foot or simply ignore its existence, and said, ironically, with pauses between the words:

“Koom Khan, thou and I must either be friends—or enemies.”

The other blinked his swollen eyelids and waved a negligent hand.

“Very well,” He replied. “Let us be enemies, Al Nakia.”

“Agreed.” Hector rose and walked to the door. There he turned and added, quite gently, “But we shall not be enemies for long.”

“For as long as there is breath in my body!” burst out Koom Khan.

“That is just what I meant when I said that it

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 would not be for long. For—I have never trusted a living enemy—and I have never feared a dead one!”

Koom Khan gave a slight start, but controlled himself almost immediately, and said, with the utmost, arrogant nonchalance:

“Death is not such a savory mouthful that one should gulp it down whole. I have changed my mind, my lord. I shall hereafter be thy friend.”

And then, with a disconcertingly sudden swing to deep seriousness, he went on:

“Al Nakia! Fools—such fools as I—lose their way amongst the pitfalls of ambition. The pathway that is straight and clear is hidden to fools—such fools as I—by the mud of our greed, by the tangled undergrowth of our wayfaring desires. A handful of dust blinded my eyes to the signal whose meaning I know well.”

“What signal?” asked Hector, rather embarrassed, and quite at a loss what to make of the other's almost tragic earnestness of gesture and expression.

“The prophecy, my lord! I set the flame of my sinful, foolish, greedy ambition against the words of the ancient prophecy! I forgot that thou, my lord, art the 'Expected One,' that thou camest out of the West, the blade in thy hand—the blade that will mate with the other blade, whenever the time is propitious and Allah gives the word!”

And Hector suppressed an impatient exclamation as, nearly automatically, he drew the sword from his waist shawl and tended it, hilt foremost, for Koom Khan to touch with his lips and swear fealty on, as

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 Tagi Khan had done that morning, and the Sheik-ul-Islam the day before.

“Of all the confounded, mystifying darned poppycock—I'll be jolly well blowed!” he said to himself, in plain, colloquial English, as he returned to his quarters in the left wing of the palace.

For in almost every instance when Hector, since he had begun to take charge of the affairs of Tamerlanistan, combining flattery and unvarnished brutality, brought the leaders and sub-leaders and henchmen of the different warring factions into line with his administrative policy, sooner or later the blades and the ancient prophecy were referred to, as the final argument.

And Hector was prey to natural curiosity. He wanted to know what it was all about.

But he did not dare.

At first his congenital stubbornness and, too, a certain fatalistic resolve to accept this new life of his and all it might bring without question or doubt or mental reservations, had sealed his lips. Now the very fact that he had accepted all without asking, that thus he had admitted indirectly that he was familiar with the prophecy and its meaning, made it impossible for him to demand an explanation.

What puzzled him most was that reference was always made to two blades.

He might have understood had they spoken of only one, the one he had found in the old lumber room near Dealle Castle; might have figured out that originally it had belonged to one of the Gengizkhani

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 family and that his bringing it here, back to Tamerlanistan, was considered a good omen by these superstitious people.

But—what was the other blade?

Too, who was this mad old Oriental in Coal Yard Street, near Drury Lane, who had lent him money on the sword and had sent him, indirectly, with that cryptic note to the house in the Colootallah where he had seen the princess?

Was he perhaps Hajji Akhbar Khan, the dead Ameer's prime minister, the Itizad el-Dowleh, of whom he heard whispers now and then, and who, shortly before his master's death, had gone to Europe on some secret mission?

And what then was the answer to it all?

How did this puzzle picture of twisted, painted, crazy Asian life dovetail into a whole?

For it did dovetail—to everybody's satisfaction, except his own. The very gipsies and donkey boys and beggars and dervishes seemed to accept it.

He would have asked Aziza Nurmahal. He trusted her implicitly, and liked her just as he would have liked some wholesome English “county” girl whose interests were entirely taken up with bringing baskets to the aged and ailing villagers, playing croquet on the curate's lawn, and going for a run with the harrier hounds, in short skirts and puttees.

Even if he had not been in love with Jane Warburton, Aziza Nurmahal would have had no sex appeal, no emotional message, for him.

He simply liked her. Liked her tremendously, and he would have asked her, as he might a pal:

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“I say, tell me what all this drivel about swords and prophecies signifies—there's a dear!”

But the freedom and comradeship of the open road had ceased the moment she had set foot in the palace of the Gengizkhani, and once more she had become the Oriental princess, hedged in by ancient customs, submitting to the traditions of purdah and harem, of veil and woman's seclusion, putting aside the former only when she was surrounded by her servants and eunuchs, and never seeing him without palace officials and courtiers hovering about—and listening.

Thus Hector had never an opportunity of asking her, and found himself in the awkward and, from his straight-grained English point of view distasteful, predicament of forever playing a rôle, forever, silently, indirectly, admitting that he was perfectly familiar with a mystery of which in reality he hardly under stood the outer fringes.

Tamerlanistan accepted him and though, naturally, amongst the older generation there were many who grumbled a little, who criticized, who compared him, of course unfavorably, with Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, the younger men praised the superior wisdom of the new prime minister, Al Nakia, the Sadr Azem.

He was not one of those cocksure Europeans and Americans who, delegated by circumstance to rule over Asiatics, decide immediately that all their traditions and customs are wrong and must therefore be promptly changed.

He knew that the thing which the Oriental dislikes

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 most in the European system is its dawdling, minute sloth in the manner of meting out justice. The Oriental holds that, when he is wronged, it is the business of the ruler or his executive delegate to right him at once, without delay, without expense, without wearying process of law, fully and finally. He appeals to his ruler loudly in the market-place, the mosque, or the hall of audience, expects that justice be dealt out then and there, that the decision may be inexorably, cruelly just, but must be reached irrespective of rules of evidence, precedent, customs or laws other than religious ones—and that all judgments must be made instantly executive and must under no conditions be subject to appeal.

So, as the princess' delegate, Hector held open court in front of the palace every morning, with Koom Khan and Gulabian as his advisers and often, when it came to settling domestic squabbles between husband and wife or master and servant, the old nurse contributing valuable, frequently profane, and always ruthlessly constructive counsel; and, in consequence, he was busy all day and half the night.

But he liked it. He forgot himself, his past work, his past disgrace and bitterness, in this work, and in the clean satisfaction of achieving which resulted from it.

The yellow wold of Sussex was forgotten.

All was forgotten except Jane Warburton.

In regard to the pacification and subjugation of the western marches, he progressed with the utmost slowness and caution, very much to the disappointment of

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 Koom Khan and Gulabian, the former advocating swift action for military, the latter for financial reasons.

Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, the governor, had not fulfilled his braggart threat, had not advanced to the capital at the head of his armed men to claim the hand of Aziza Nurmahal in marriage. On the other hand, he had declared his absolute independence, was now openly the ally of Hajji Musa Al-Mutasim, surnamed Al-Ghadir, 'The Basin,' the leader of the Persian border ruffians, and was levying ever-increasing toll on the caravans that went up the Darh-i-Sultani, “The King's Highway,” with the argricultural [sic] produce of Tamerlanistan, to return with the wares of Persia, Bokhara, Khiva, and the Caucasus.

When the Sheik-ul-Islam, on a spiritual journey to Isfahan, was held up by the robbers and deprived of his sacerdotal green silk robe, his purse, and his rosary of flawless emeralds, with the ironically courtly words: “Take off that robe, O Certain Person, and remove the rosary. Also turn over thy purse. All three are wanted by the daughter of my maternal uncle!”; when, threatening the robbers with excommunication and similar dire theological consequences, he was answered with the insolent pun that religion was all very well for the Ahl Hayt, the Dwellers of Towns, but had no effect on the Ahl Bayt, the Dwellers of the Black Tents; when, on his return to the capital, he poured out the tale of his grievance and demanded that a punitive expedition be sent immediately to the western marches, Hector cut the lamentations short by

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 saying that he himself was the siper salar, the captain general, and that the interference of the church in matters military was his pet dislike.

“But, Al Nakia,” protested the Sheik-ul-Islam, “be pleased to consider my losses.”

“A new robe of state shall be given thee, also some money, and a rosary …”

“Of emeralds—like the one I lost?” came the quick, greedy query.

“No. God hears prayers even though they be clicked on simple wooden beads.”

“But my loss of dignity, my lord! My loss of prestige!”

Hector smiled sardonically. From the very first, he had felt an antipathy for the suave, hypocritical priest.

“Worldly thoughts for a holy man,” he suggested; and when the other again spoke about his loss of dignity and, with a general appeal to the courtiers who crowded the hall of audience, repeated his demand that an expedition be sent to punish Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, Hector burst forth with a thunderous “Silence! I follow my own counsel, even though the robbers cut off the nose of the Commander of the Faithful himself.”

The Sheik-ul-Islam rose and walked away, angry, mortified, throwing over his shoulder the Parthian shot that Al Nakia was setting up to be a warrior, a fighter, a swashbuckler, a leader of men, but that “the more we approach the enemy, the more the tiger in our heart becomes a lamb!”

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“Thou hast made an enemy of the priest,” said Koom Khan to Hector, that night, as the two, in the company of the Armenian treasurer, were smoking peaceful hubble-bubbles on the balcony of the palace, looking out into the spring night where fire starlight drifted through budding boughs into budding earth.

Hector made a negligent gesture, while the other continued that, too, there was some truth in what the Sheik had said:

“The army is ready, is eager to fight. Let us strike, Al Nakia.”

And Gulabian, though an Armenian and thus, congenitally, a man of peace, agreed to it and advocated a quick, smashing attack on the governor of the western marches. He went on to say that, through the good offices of spies and also of the local agent of the Cable Company, the Babu Chandra, who had intercepted and deciphered several cable messages sent from India, via Tamerlanistan, to Isfahan, and thence to the headquarters of the rebel chief, he had found out that the latter was preparing a great military coup, for which he had not only the support of the renegade Arab, Musa Al-Mutasim, but also of certain Europeans who seemed to have enough influence with the British-Indian government to have been granted a permit to ship rifles and ammunition in large quantities through the Persian Gulf.

“England takes no interest in the affairs of Tamerlanistan,” continued Hector. “It is outside their sphere of interests.”

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“Yet the fact remains. The rifles are being shipped.”

“But who are the Europeans with Abderrahman Yahiah Khan? And what have they to do with this land?”

“Everything. For remember, there is the old question of the 'concessions,' and one of the Europeans—his name is Mr. Preserved Higgins …”

Hector sat up straight. “Preserved Higgins?”

He thought, puzzled. Why, he said to himself as he had done once before, it was this same Cockney millionaire who had been the first to mention the name of Tamerlanistan to him, who had wanted him to go there, who had spoken of the princess, of Aziza Nurmahal, and …

“My lord,” Gulabian's terse, low voice cut through his thoughts, “Mr. Preserved Higgins is a careful man. He holds to the ancient maxim that among the sages, Narudu; among the beasts, the jackal; among the birds, the crow; among men, the barber; and among wise men, he who thinks twice—is the most crafty. Thinks twice! Acts twice! Thus he is also shipping rifles and ammunition from Bokhara and Khiva and Russian Turkestan, in case an enemy whisper a word into the ears of the British-Indian Raj. Too, there is the other European whom he brought with him, and my spies tell me that he is a soldier like thyself, trained in the art of war, quick and energetic and courageous. Nor is that all. For—thou knowest the old prophecy—of the sword and the wooing of the swords …?”

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“Yes. Of course,” said Hector, blushing slightly for the white lie. “What about it?”

“The governor of the western marches is spreading the news that thou art not the man meant in the prophecy, that thou art an impostor, that the other, the Englishman whom Mr. Preserved Higgins brought with him, is the real Al Nakia, the real 'Expected One,' and …”

“Then Mr. Preserved Higgins knows of the prophecy?” sharply demanded Hector.

“Yes. He knows, it through his agent, the Babu Bansi.”

Hector was about to accept the explanation, when, suddenly, looking up and seeing the expression of sardonic amusement that flitted over Koom Khan's vulpine features, he remembered that this was Tamerlanistan, the heart of the Moslem Orient, and that the Moslems, as a religious body, have that strange characteristic which the Chinese have racially; namely, an unwritten, uncodified, but absolutely compelling freemasonry which makes it possible that a secret known to all the Moslems of the community, from the highest dignitary of the mosque olema to the lowest, raggedest donkey boy, from the head of the Rakaiz Al-Utab, the “Merchants' Guild,” to a recently and forcefully converted plum-colored Nubian slave, that a secret which is whispered in the coffee-houses, the opium shops, the palace yards, the camel markets, the caravanserais, and behind the flopping curtains of the harem, remains a sealed book to the non-Moslem members of the community. He knew that it was this peculiar characteristic which, next to the centripetal

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 influence of the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca and Madina, is the power which holds Islam together and which, in spite of the many races which compose it, makes of Islam a fighting, thinking, to-be-reckoned- with whole.

The only exception to this freemasonic rule of secrecy is made in the case of a non-Moslem whose advice and help is absolutely essential and who has become an integral part of the community, and that was why Gulabian though an Armenian and a Christian, but a member of the intimate palace household and of the late Ameer's cabinet, would have heard about the prophecy of the blades.

But Babu Bansi was a Hindu, an infidel—and an outsider, working for outside interests.

How then had the man found out?

And Hector voiced the question.

“How did Bansi find out?” he demanded.

Thus interrogated, the Armenian seemed horribly startled and confused, while Koom Khan broke into raucous, disagreeable laughter—laughter presently echoed in a cracked falsetto from the room in back of the balcony whence Ayesha Zemzem, the old nurse, stepped out with a clanking of brass anklets and a low, ironic salaam to Gulabian, who was momentarily becoming more unhappy.

“Al Nakia,” she said, “there are three things the effects of which upon himself no man can foretell—namely, desire of woman, the dice box, and the drinking of ardent spirits—”

"And,” gently cooed Koom Khan, with a glance at

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 the uneasy Armenian, “our Gulabian likes not the dice box, being a man faithfully mated to his swollen purse, and sacrificing daily to the swag-bellied god of compound interest. Nor does he care for ardent spirits, being in that respect—and in that respect only!—like a True Believer. But—ahee!—the desire of woman smells sweetly, pungently, intoxicatingly in his nostrils!”

“Indeed!” the old nurse took up the tale. “The desire of woman! Our Gulabian knows not the truth of the saying that the beauty of the nightingale is its song, science the beauty of an ugly man, forgiveness the beauty of a devotee, and the beauty of a decent man steadfastness in love. Shameless dancing girls from the stinking, yellow Southland—bold-eyed, red-haired hussies from Georgia and the Caucasus—raven-locked maidens from Bokhara—in a never-ending procession, they dance across the heart of our Gulabian. They sweep with perfumed fingers the impetuous harp strings of his soul. And,” she went on mercilessly, while the Armenian stammered and blushed, while Koom Khan guffawed crudely, and even Hector, for all his preoccupation, joined in the merriment, “there was talk, at the time of the Ameer's death, of one Jayashri, a golden-skinned beauty from far Bengal. 'Sister,' the Babu Bansi called her—but a naughty sister she was, finding but little joy in sisterly devotion, in minding her fat and indecent brother's household pots, but instead whispering words of sweetness and love and soft passion into the ear of our …”

“Peace, Leaky-Tongue!” cut in the Armenian, thoroughly

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 exasperated. “Peace, Parrot-Face! I admit it. Jayashri's beauty was overpowering—as the moon's on the fourteenth day. Her little, white feet were lisping twin flowers, her little nose was …”

“Spare us the enumeration of her physical perfections,” laughed Hector. Then, seriously: “Thou didst tell her?”

“Yes. A word or two about the prophecy of the blades. She said that true love means utter trust, utter confidence, and so just a word or two I told her, my lord!”

“But sufficient to give a clue to her—brother, the Babu!”

“Enough, too,” croaked the old nurse, “to throw this land into turmoil, to cause the Babu Bansi to send messages along the devil wires to Belait—to Europe—and then to smash the devil machinery, so that the other son of a noseless mother, the Babu Chandra, stalks into the presence of Aziza Nurmahal and speaks words bloated with arrogance! Yes! Thou didst tell her enough, O Armenian, to plant the seeds of rebellion in this

And she gave a terse and vituperative history of the events that had disturbed the peace of Tamerlanistan, just about the time of the memorable card game at Dealle Castle when Hector had lived up to the traditions of the Wade family and had shouldered the guilt of his elder brother … the memory came to him now, and with it a slight bitterness, too, a slight elation.

For, after all, he said to himself, if it had not been for the card scandal, for the Wade traditions, he

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 would still be in England, living an entirely honorable and entirely innocuous life as a subaltern of Dragoons, while here he was standing on his own feet—independent—and …

He shut off his rambling thoughts and turned to Ayesha Zemzem who was still emptying the vials of her abuse on the head of Gulabian, to the accompaniment of Koom Khan's rumbling laughter.

“Enough!” Hector raised an impatient hand. “The harm is done. Mr. Preserved Higgins knows of the prophecy, knows enough of it at least to turn it to his advantage, and he will doubtless try and force our hands in the matter of the 'concessions.' All right. We'll make the best of a bad bargain.”

“A very bad bargain,” commented Koom Khan, with a sidelong glance at the treasurer.

The latter smiled.

“Fight poison with poison,” he suggested. “The Babu Chandra, too, represents European interests. If thou, O Al Nakia, sayest the word …”

“I know. If I say the word, the sahebs who employ the Babu Chandra will some to my support with money and rifles and ammunition—but they, too, will demand 'concessions.' No—there is no choice between the Devil and Satan. No 'concessions' shall be granted until we—the princess and I—have thoroughly considered the matter from every angle. I do not trust the sahebs.”

“And thou a saheb thyself!” softly said the Armenian.

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“Thus so much better able to judge the strength—and the weaknesses of the saheb-log!”

“But remember!” argued Koom Khan. “Abderrahman Yahiah Khan is spreading the tale that thou art an impostor—that the Englishman whom Higgins saheb has brought is the true 'Expected One!'”

Again Hector played up to his rôle, which by this time had become second nature to him. He drew the ancient sword from its sheath with a dramatic flourish.

“Here is the proof that I am the 'Expected One!'” he said.

“Proof enough for us,” rejoined Koom Khan. “But—thou knowest how it is. The masses, the people, are like sheep. If the governor of the western marches, with the help of Higgins saheb's money bags and the unknown saheb's war prowess, should make a sudden descent upon us and snatch victory out of our fingers, then, before we shall be able to rally for a counter-stroke, the masses will swing to him. They will say that, blade or no blade, thou art an impostor. And then”—he shrugged his massive shoulders—“I love thee well, my lord—I would not care to see the little, little jackals gorge themselves on thy bleeding, headless trunk—”

“Nor shalt thou see it,” replied Hector. “I tell thee I have considered everything. When I fight Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, I shall fight him on ground of my own choosing, and not on ground of his choosing”—and he whispered certain instructions to Koom Khan, which sent the latter to his headquarters with a chuckle and the parting words that Al Nakia was indeed

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 a warrior amongst the warriors, swift as a snake, keen as a tiger, and shrewd as a bull elephant in spring.

The Armenian's final plea that the country needed the safety of the western road, that the caravan men were afraid of robbers, that traffic with Persia, Khiva, and Bokhara had practically stopped and with it the tax receipts. Hector dismissed by asking the other to develop the eastern trade.

“There is Afghanistan,” he said, “and India, both ready to buy our produce, and a good road leads there, the Darb-al-Sharki, 'The Eastern Highway,' and our kafilas can trade there as easily and as profitably as they used to with Persia. All that is needed is a little pluck, a little persistency, and a great deal of initiative—and I rely on thee, friend Gulabian, to supply all three!”—a broad flattery which fully served its purpose and sent the Armenian on his way, as pleased with Hector as Koom Khan had been.

“A clever man is Al Nakia,” the old nurse said that night to Aziza Nurmahal. “He does not draw the sword of foolish audacity, nor does he throw away the scabbard of precaution, and it has indeed been said by a very wise man that the brain, not the body, is the proof of love. The body? The face? By the red pig's bristles!—am I a fool or a moon-sick virgin of thirteen to call a thing made up of impure matter a face, to drink its charms as a drunkard swallows the ardent liquor from his cup? Not that Al Nakia is ugly. For there is a hidden fire of passion in his eyes that promises—ah!—promises!”

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“Hai—hai—hai!” exclaimed the princess, her words choked with gurgling, irrepressible laughter. “By the Prophet—art thou then in love with Al Nakia, old woman? Why—when thou speakest of him, thy eyes roll about like the tail of the water-wagtail, thy shriveled old lips pout to resemble ripe pomegranates, thy ancient, flat bosom heaves like the lotus-bud awakening to the winds of spring. Truly, Al Nakia will feel flattered when he hears that the happiness of all thy desires and the desires of all thy happiness are concentrated in the touch of his hand, the touch of his lips!”

“I am thinking of thee, Little Dream by the Gift of Thy Face,” gently rejoined the nurse, “and not of myself. What has an old witch like myself to do with love—what can a pig do with a rose bottle? But thou and he should mate, Little Moon of Fulfillment, thus finishing the old prophecy—the wooing of swords!”

Aziza Nurmahal shook her head.

“I like him well,” she said softly, “but I do not love him. Love is a question—but one cannot force the answer to it. Love is a lampless pilgrim, wandering through the black night—and looking for the moon-rays that never come. Love is a drifting in the stream of vague, sweet things—a stretching of longing arms at the shadowy fringe of the never-to-be!”

“Melancholy thoughts for the heart of a babe,” said Ayesha Zemzem.

And, like many another girl, before and since, East and West, the princess whispered, with a distinct note of not at all distressing self-pity:

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“I shall never love anybody!”

A statement which, at least subconsciously, she withdrew three days later, when walking through the Bazaar of the Goldsmiths, followed by a retinue of servants and eunuchs, her little face more disclosed than hidden by the diaphanous veil that covered her features from the soft curve of her chin to the tip of her nose, her lithe young body robed in the mysteriously feminine folds of a rose-red sari embroidered with tiny seed pearls, she saw a lean, hawkish, black-eyed stranger standing there, dressed in the costume of a rich Persian gentleman; evidently a sightseer, a traveler, for he was watching the shifting crowd interestedly.

He saw her and stared—frankly, rudely stared. But Aziza Nurmahal smiled, with all the shrewd demureness of her girlhood and with all the ancient wisdom of her sex, as she heard Mahsud Hakki, the head eunuch, make grumbling complaint that these were Persian manners, the manners of bad Moslems, of swine-fed heretics and similar base-born cattle, to ogle women in the bazaars and market-places.

That night, pledging her to secrecy by the gift of a handful of gold coins and half-a-dozen silk saris, she instructed Kumar Zaida, a pert little Tajik slave girl whose love affairs were the scandal of the whole palace, to make the rounds of the caravanserais and to find out the name of the Persian stranger:

“A lean man, with high cheek bones, an aquiline, nose, clean-shaven, dressed in a scarlet silk khalat, a white Persian lamb cap on his head. He carries his

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 cartridge belt in the Circassian manner, from right shoulder to left hip;” which was a remarkably faithful description, chiefly considering that she had only seen him in the fleeting fraction of a second!

And when the next day Zaida reported that the stranger had left town to return to his own country, and that in spite of all warnings he had taken the western highway which was infested with the robbers of Abderrahman Yahiah Khan and “The Basin,” Aziza Nurmahal's heart felt heavy within her, and her fingers wandered aimlessly over the strings of her rubabah, her Persian guitar.

The stranger, meanwhile, was spurring his Balkh stallion up the western highway, beneath the purple depths of the night sky where hung tiny points of light that glittered and glistened with the cold gleam of diamonds.

“That Babu factotum of Mr. Preserved Higgins knows a jolly lot about Tamerlanistan,” he said to himself, whimsically, “but he does not know the most important thing. He does not know that the little princess has the blackest eyes in all the world. The wooing of swords? The fulfilling of the old prophecy? All right—'Barkis is willin’'—now more than ever!”

And he kept on toward the west, where a faint, silver gray mountain was flung like a cloud against the sky. All night he rode, and through the soft spring morning that dropped over the land with a brocaded mantle of rose and gold, down the Darb-i-Sultani that was flanked by huge piles of bare rock, standing detached upon the surface of sand and clay …

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 an immense expanse of land, a scalped, flayed wilderness where, to use the Arab saying, there lived nobody but Allah. Yet a land that had once been a granary, that had once been green with wheat and yellow with pulse, that had once fed hundreds of thousands—and that would again bear fruit, given irrigation, development, the granting of—“concessions.”

And it was of “concessions” that, three days later, the stranger talked to Mr. Preserved Higgins, who was stretched at ease beneath the silken dome of Abderrahman Yahiah Khan's tent of state, the Babu Bansi squatting at his feet and looking up at the eccentric Cockney millionaire with adoring eyes.

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30 the Nominalists; and the issues of it, in the eleventh century, at which time the "Dark Ages" passed into the earlier of the two periods of the Middle Ages, were formulated on the realist side by William of Champeaux, while the Breton Rous- selin, or Roscellinus, had the perilous honour of defining them on behalf of the nominalists. To see the depth of the difference we must step back a little, to a time when metaphysics and psychology were not distinguished from other spheres of science, and all research had for its object the nature of being. Plato himself held ideas not as mere abstractions but in some degree as creative powers; and we shall see how potent this function became in the thought of the Middle Ages when,

the universe of things is but a picture produced by the evolution of the phenomena of consciousness. The proper names for these opposite conceptions are of course Non- menalism and Phenomenalism. Realism proper as a habit of thought, whatever may have been its provisional uses, is now a mischievous habit; noumenalism is a harmless amusement.

1 Roscellinus, the Roger Bacon of the eleventh century, learned, rebellious, lucid and heroic, withstood the Church for philosophy as did Bacon in the thirteenth for natural science. It would seem that in heroism at any rate Abélard was below his master. 2 Vid. p. 50.


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60 Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who early in the seven- teenth century attended lectures at Padua, opined that natural science deals with "ignoble studies, not proportioned to the dignity of our Souls." In the eighteenth century indeed, grave English physicians, humanists who forgot how Aristotle had exclaimed that marvellousness lies in all natural phenomena, scorned the trivial curiosity of John Hunter respecting flies and tadpoles.

It is part of my argument to-day to point out one evil of many which this prejudice has wrought for medicine. The progress of an applied science dependent as it is upon accessions of advantage from other arts, yet on the whole is from the simple to the complex; from facts of more direct observation to those of longer inference: and this path was the more necessary when the right method of inference-the so-called inductive method-had not been formulated, and indeed was barely in use. Now in medicine, from Homer to Lord Lister, direct observation and the simpler means of ex- periment have obtained their first-fruits on the surface of the body. In Homeric times surgery was the institution of medicine, and kings con-


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80 In the thirteenth century then the conflict with the provisional synthesis of the Faith had become imminent and menacing. The faith, the chivalry and the learning of the Saracens led men to feel that without the Church all might not be utter darkness. Albert owed as much to Avicenna-

order there were three well-marked parties; namely, of the naturalists, as Bacon; of the mystics, as Bonaventura; and of the sophists, as John Duns the Northumbrian. Now Bacon's troubles did not begin till the succession to the Generalship of the Order of the seraphic Bonaventura, an argumentative mystic (like Duns, and unlike the ecstatic mystics of St Victor), who, rejecting Aristotle, had steeped himself in the neo-platonism of Augustine and "Dionysius the Areopagite"; and Bonaventura and his party it was who stopped Bacon's month at Oxford, and shut him up in Paris. What the life of Bacon and the direction of medieval thought might have been had Grosseteste been able to spare Adam Marsh from Oxford for the Generalship it were perhaps too curious to consider; yet we may profitably remember that Bacon, brushing aside Porphyry and his ques- tions, and denouncing the "vain physics" of Paris, urged that enquiry should begin with the simplest objects of research, and rise gradually to the higher and higher; every observa- tion being controlled by experiment. He says indeed that by experiment only can we distinguish a sophism from a demon- stration. (Op. Tert. xIx.) Earnestly he tried to follow this method; he seems to have spent on it substance of his own, and, after this was exhausted, to have appeared for the first time in history as a petitioner for "scientific grants in aid." Diderot speaks of Bacon as "Un des génies les plus surpre- nants que la nature ait produits, et un des hommes les plus malheureux"; he lived in vain, died unhonoured, and left no disciple.


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100 had been taught in the High Schools, philosophy was born again, and men found themselves no longer the slaves but the kin of the great ancients. Telesius, Bruno, Campanella vindicated natural science and liberty of thought. Galileo taught in Padua for twenty years, including the time when Harvey graduated there; Torricelli was a pupil of the great Florentine; in 1582, on the theory of Copernicus, Gregory reformed the Calendar, and thus laid the axe to the root of astrology; by Newton terrestrial physics were established in the celestial spheres'. Malpighi, who was to fulfil Harvey's discovery and foresight, was born in N.-E. Italy in the very year (1628) in which the De motu cordis was published. In 1626 Boyle was creating chemistry. Anatomy, which had slept since its days in Alexandria, was fully awake. The Society of the Lincei was virtually founded in 1603; the Royal Society in 1645; the Academy of France in 1656. Clinical teaching, in- itiated in Salerno and advanced by the Consilia

¹ Galileo and Kepler had proved the validity of terrestrial physics and mathematics in astronomy. Aristotle of course was the first to apply physics to astronomy, but wrong physics. 2 With which Malpighi was in close association.


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110 The great University of Paris, which through- out the Middle Ages had been the heart of Christendom, the centre of its life and heat, which in the fourteenth century was at its splendid culmination, and which had meddled with no feeble hand even in the State, was waning even in the fifteenth century, when France was devastated by war and rapine and her schools were emptied. This University, which had savagely condemned Joan of Arc, and sent Nicholas Midi to preach a solemn sermon at the stake, "pro Joannæ salutari admonitione et populi ædificatione," in the sixteenth century came out of the religious wars stripped of its endowments, and deserted by its students; its curriculum was crassly conservative, its philosophy buckram, its theology a petrifac- tion; its forty colleges were closed, grass grew in its courts, and its public disputations were abased to the decorous apostasy of the freethinker. Montpellier was dominated by realism (vitalism). Francis Bacon had done better to have gone with Harvey to Padua; almost in the year of the publication of the De motu cordis, the Par- liament of Paris issued an edict that no teacher should promulgate anything contrary to the ac- cepted doctrines of the ancients.


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90 who saw that light six long centuries ago; yet a child rather of our age than of his own. As Abélard had closed the gates upon the neo-platonist tradition of Alexandria, so Ockham closed them against realism in all its forms; and the Church cursed them both. In his own person the occupa- tion of professorial chairs by Franciscans came to an end; Paris and the Thomists could not con- sistently oppose nominalism; Duns the North- umbrian had inflated realism into a monstrous phantasm, and speculative reason had to submit to the yoke of verification. Yet what could nominalism do for theology, or for clerical schools? The Franciscans for the most part had turned to mysticism, and thenceforth the man of science and the devotee were to work apart. Furthermore, by Ockham philosophy gained a new meaning, or lost all meaning. Before Locke, Voltaire, and Kant, Ockham demonstrated that faculties were not substances; and differentiated logic, psychology, and natural science¹.

But if, as I have said, the way for Harvey and the other pioneers of natural knowledge was thus prepared for them, it was still, even in the seven-

1 Vid. p. 50.


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70 cuts, published in 1491; they advanced to the Aphorisms, the Diet in Acute Diseases and the Prognostics of Hippocrates, overlaid with Syriac, Arabic and Spanish apparatus and glosses; to the Ars Parva of Calen; to the first and fifth Canons of Avicenna, with glosses; to the Ixth Book of Rhazes, Honcin, Aegidius Corboliensis, and perhaps some of the translations of Constantinus Africanus';-this was the lore that ruled the medical schools even to the birth of Harvey. Disputations among the stu- dents were incessant, both "inter se" and "sub cathe- drâ"; but it is doubtful whether these did more than sharpen their dialectical wits. Botany, regarded by the galenists as the secret of the divine dispen- sary, was always more forward; every medical. school had its physie garden, professors carried their students abroad to gather herbs, and Herbals, Dispensatoriums and Kräuterbücher were much in

I may venture to quote again the "locus classicus" :- "Wol knew he the olde Esculapius, And Deiscorides, and eek Rufus, Old Ypocras, Haly, and Galicu; Serapion, Razis, and Avicen; Averrois, Damascien, and Constantyn; Bernard, and Gatesden, and Gilbertyn." Chaucer, C. T. Prol. 429-434 (Skeat's Ed.).


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50 from without we know that it comes from within. As Mr Benn puts it, we have extended the atomistic method from "matter" to motion. Harvey's con- temporary, Francis Bacon, sagaciously guessed that heat is an expansive motion of particles; but he regarded heat and cold as two contrary principles. Almost in the same generation the brilliant John Mayow perceived a substance in the air "allied to saltpetre," which passed in and out of the blood by the way of the lungs or placenta. "Innate heat" then gave way to phlogiston; but it was not till the discovery of oxygen and of the conservation of energy that we attained a theory of energy, and finally got rid of "matter and form," and of all the thicket of metaphysics, relating thereto; through which in the day of Ilarvey no mind, however mighty, could have made its way.

In the history of medieval thought we must always bear in mind that in neither of its two periods were theology, logic, metaphysics, psychology, or even physics, fully differentiated; and before the Arabian literature they were not differentiated at all'. Logic, which for us is but a drill, and, like all

1 The word "philosophy" in the Middle Ages signified the pursuit of knowledge of things human and divine, and of the causes of them. It was often divided into Physics, Ethics and


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RV 53 (Rh) Amharic has a great number of such constructions, i.e. postpositions used in combination with certain prepositions. These constructions will be discussed in later units.

Note 5.7 Noun: Suffixes /-ıyye/ and /-ıyyo/

The words /səw/ 'man, person' and /set/ 'female, woman' have alternative forms /səwıyye/ 'a man' and /setıyyo/ 'a woman'. Thus: /and səw məTTa/ or /and səwıyye məTTa/ both mean 'a man came'; /and set məTTac/ or /and setıyyo məTTac/ 'a woman came'. When addressed directly to a person /səwíyye/ means something like 'hey you!' and /setıyyo/ 'hey lady!'

The word /səw/ with the definite suffix is /səwıyyew/ and /set/ is /setıyyowa/.

Note 5.7.1 Noun: Definite Suffixes /-ıyyew/ and /ıyyewa/.

Parallel to the words /səw/ and /set/ the nouns of relationship have regular definite suffixes /-ıyyew/ with the masculine nouns and /-ıyyewa/ with the feminine nouns (with some speakers these suffixes may be /-ıyyow/ and /-ıyyowa/). Examples:

These nouns may also have forms in /-ıyye/ (see Note 5.7). They have a connotation of endearment or tender familiarity rather than that of indefiniteness, e.g. /wəndımmıyye/ 'my dearest brother', /ıhıtıyye/ ' my dearest sister', 'sis', etc.

The suffix /-ıyye/ may sometimes be affixes even to adjectives, e/g/ /Konjo/ 'pretty', /Konjıyye nat/ 'she is cute'.

Note 5.8 Numerals: ordinals

The ordinals are formed from the cardinals by the addition of the suffix /-əñña/ after consonants, /-ñña/ after vowels.

Examples:


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RV 54 (Rh)

1) Change the form of the underlined verb to agree with the pronouns listed to the right of each sentence.

2) Change the underlined verb suffix pronoun to agree with the pronouns listed to the right of each sentence.


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miles from the village of Obrutchanovo a huge bridge was being built. From the village, which stood up high on the steep river-bank, its trellis-like skeleton could be seen, and in foggy weather and on still winter days, when its delicate iron girders and all the scaffolding around was covered with hoar frost, it presented a picturesque and even fantastic spectacle. Kutcherov, the engineer who was building the bridge, a stout, broad-shouldered, bearded man in a soft crumpled cap drove through the village in his racing droshky or his open carriage. Now and then on holidays navvies working on the bridge would come to the village; they begged for alms, laughed at the women, and sometimes carried off something. But that was rare; as a rule the days passed quietly and peacefully as though no bridge-building were going on, and only in the evening, when camp fires gleamed near the bridge, the wind faintly wafted the songs of the navvies. And by day there was sometimes the mournful clang of metal, don-don-don.

It happened that the engineer's wife came to see him. She was pleased with the river-banks and the gorgeous view over the green valley with trees,