"Very well," said I. "I'm tolerably tough myself; and I'll change
with the gentleman. The chances are that I shall not be in a very
liberal humour when I reach Jaffa with stiff limbs and a sore skin.
I have a very good memory, Joseph."

"I'll take thirty shillings, Mr. Jones; though I shall have to groan
all the way like a condemned devil."

I struck a bargain with him at last for five-and-twenty, and set him
to work to make the necessary change on the horses. "It will be
just the same thing to him," I said to Smith. "I find that he is as
much used to one as to the other."

"But how much money are you to pay him?" he asked. "Oh, nothing," I
replied. "Give him a few piastres when you part with him at Jaffa."
I do not know why I should have felt thus inclined to pay money out
of my pocket for this Smith,--a man whom I had only seen for the
first time on the preceding evening, and whose temperament was so
essentially different from my own; but so I did. I would have done
almost anything in reason for his comfort; and yet he was a
melancholy fellow, with good inward pluck as I believed, but without
that outward show of dash and hardihood which I confess I love to
see. "Pray tell him that I'll pay him for it," said he. "We'll
make that all right," I answered; and then we remounted,--not
without some difficulty on his part. "You should have let me rub in
that brandy," I said. "You can't conceive how efficaciously I would
have done it." But he made me no answer.

At noon we met a caravan of pilgrims coming up from Jordan. There
might be some three or four hundred, but the number seemed to be