"Then don't you forestall me!" laughed Jeremy. "The fellow with a face
like a pig's stern is Yussuf Dakmar, and he's my special preserve."

"I am a good Moslem. I refuse to lay hand on pig," said Hadad, smiling.

We discussed Feisul and the Arab cause.

"Oh, if we had Lawrence with us!" exclaimed Hadad excitedly at last. "A
little, little man--hardly any larger than Mrs. Ticknor--but a David
against Goliath! And would you believe it?--there is an idiotic rumour
that Lawrence has returned and is hiding in Damascus! The French are
really disturbed about it. They have cabled their Foreign Office and
received an official denial of the rumour; but official denials carry
no weight nowadays. Out of ten Frenchmen in Syria, five believe that
Lawrence is with Feisul and if they can catch him he will get short
shrift. But, oh, Jimgrim--oh, if it were true! Wallahi!"

Grim didn't answer, but I saw him look long at Jeremy, and then for
about thirty seconds steadily at Mabel Ticknor. After that he stared
out of the window for a long time, not even moving his head when a crowd
of Bedouins galloped to within fifty yards of the train and volleyed at
it from horseback "merely out of devilment," as Hadad hastened to assure
us.

We were winding up the Lebanon Valley by that time. Carpets of flowers;
green grass; waterfalls; a thatched hut to the twenty square miles,
with a scattering of mean black tents between; every stone building in
ruins; goats where fat kine ought to be; and a more or less modern
railway screeching across the landscape, short of fuel and oil. That's