breast and I bewept me and I wailed aloud and I would not make comfort.
Till at last they all awoken and they came out of their huts and they
reviled at me for disturbing them as they slept themselfs so happily.
Then I spake much to them. And all the time I teared with my eyes and
moaned aloudly.

"But," put in Kirby, "I don't see what this--"

"In a presently you shall, howadji. Yesterday I begot your goat. To-day
I shall make you to frisk with peacefulness of heart. Those fellaheen
cannot read. They are not of an education, as I am. And they know my
wiseness in reading. For over than a trillion times I have told them.
And they believe. Pictures also they believe. Just as men of an
education believe the printed word; knowing full well it could not be
printed if it were not Allah's own truth. Well, these folk believe a
picture, if it be in a book. So I showed them pictures. And I read the
law which was beneath the pictures. They heard me read. And they saw the
pictures with their own eyesight. So what could they do but believe? And
they did. Behold, howadji!"

Opening the volume with respectful care, Najib thumbed the yellowing
pages. Presently he paused at a picture which represented in glaring
detail a stricken battlefield strewn with dead and dying Orientals of
vivid costume. In the middle distance a regiment of prisoners was being
slaughtered in a singularly bloodthirsty fashion. The caption, above the
cut, read:

_"Destruction of Sennacherib's Assyrian Hosts, by the People of
Israel."_