slipped out the garden's back door and wandered up and down the dark
canyon of a lane.

He might as well have walked up and down the veranda of Shepheard's
Hotel.

And yet the girl had her key. She could get away if she wanted to
and she might want to if she knew the truth.

But how to get that truth to her? That was his problem. A dozen
plans he considered and rejected. There were the mails--simple and
obvious channel--but he had a strong idea that maidens in Mohammedan
seclusion do not receive their letters directly. And now,
especially, Tewfick would be on his guard.

Then there was the chance of a message through some native's hands.
The house servants--? There were hours, one day, when Ryder
sauntered about the streets, covertly eyeing the baggy-trousered
_sais_ who stood holding a horse in the sun or the tattered baker's
boy, approaching the entrance with his long loaves upon his head,
but Ryder's Arabic was not of a power or subtlety to corrupt any
creature, and he stayed his tongue.

Bitterly he regretted his wasted years. If he had not misspent them
in godly living he would now be upon such terms of intimacy with
some official's pretty wife who had the entrée to a pasha's daughter
that she could be induced to make use of it for him.

Desperately he thought of remedying this defect. There were several
charming young matrons not averse to devoted young men, but the time