In the immediate foreground lay El Medina itself, with its narrow
streets, its busy bazars, its fair-skinned people, and its low, yellow,
flat-roofed houses, each with its well and court-yard, nestling cozily
among the feathery-fronded date-trees.

From the Eastern Road, a caravan from the Nejd was descending slowly
into the town, and so clear was the atmosphere that Amzi could
distinguish the huge, white dromedaries, and catch an occasional glint
of a green shugduf, or the gorgeous litter of a grandee, trapped in
scarlet and gold.

It was indeed a fair scene, and Amzi enjoyed it to the full with the
keen enjoyment of one who possesses an esthetic temperament, an intense
love of the beautiful. Yet he began to feel lonely in this town of his
adoption. It was long since he had seen Yusuf, and he commenced to think
seriously of returning for a time to Mecca.

Besides, he was tired of waiting for Mohammed's long-deferred visit, and
he was anxious again to see the man whose strange fascination over him
he scarcely dared to acknowledge even to himself. The emptiness and
idleness of his own life was beginning to pall upon him, and he compared
unfavorably his sluggish existence with the busy, quietly energetic way
in which Yusuf was spending his days.

One source of unfailing pleasure to him had been the companionship of
Dumah, who had followed him to Medina, but was wandering about as usual,
returning to Amzi when tired or hungry, as a birdling returns to its
mother's wing.

And Amzi had almost a mother's love for the boy, for poor Dumah seemed a