"He had a lot of luck," mused Dicky as he read. "They don't end that way
as a rule."

Then he went to Fielding, humming a certain stave from one of Watts's
hymns.






THE PRICE OF THE GRINDSTONE--AND THE DRUM

He lived in the days of Ismail the Khedive, and was familiarly known as
the Murderer. He had earned his name, and he had no repentance. From
the roof of a hut in his native village of Manfaloot he had dropped a
grindstone on the head of Ebn Haroun, who contended with him for the
affections of Ahassa, the daughter of Haleel the barber, and Ebn Haroun's
head was flattened like the cover of a pie. Then he had broken a cake of
dourha bread on the roof for the pigeons above him, and had come down
grinning to the street, where a hesitating mounted policeman fumbled with
his weapon, and four ghaffirs waited for him with their naboots.

Seti then had weighed his chances, had seen the avenging friends of Ebn
Haroun behind the ghaffirs, and therefore permitted himself to be marched
off to the mudirieh. There the Mudir glared at him and had him loaded
with chains and flung into the prison, where two hundred convicts arrayed
themselves against myriad tribes which, killed individually, made a spot
on the wall no bigger than a threepenny-bit! The carnage was great, and
though Seti was sleepless night after night it was not because of his