and return to Tarsus you can serve Kagig best and give me my best
chance too. Hurry back and help the consul raise Cain!"

That closed the arguments, because Maga Jhaere slipped past Kagig
and approached us with the obvious intention of listening. She
had discovered a knowledge of English scarcely perfect but astonishingly
comprehensive, which she had chosen to keep to herself when we first
met--a regular gipsy trick. Fred threw down the gauntlet to her,
uncovering depths of distrust that we others had never suspected
under his air of being amused.

"Now, miss!" he said, striding up to her. "Let us understand each
other! This is my friend." He pointed to Monty. "If harm comes
to him that you could have prevented, you shall pay!"

Maga tossed back her loose coils of hair and laughed.

"Never fear, sahib!" Rustum Khan called out. "If ought should happen
to my Colonel sahib that Umm Kulsum shall be first to die. The
women shall tell of her death for a generation, to frighten naughty
children!"

"You hear that?" demanded Fred.

Maga laughed again, and swore in some outlandish tongue.

"I hear! And you hear this, you old--" She called Fred by a name
that would make the butchers wince in the abattoirs at Liverpool.
"If anything happens to that man,--she pointed to Will, and her
eyes blazed with lawless pleasure in his evident discomfort--"I myself