fed the girl and clothed her with linen from Beni Mazar all these years!"
And he turned upon his heel, and kicked a yellow cur in the ribs; then he
went to the nearest cafe, and making huge rolls of forcemeat with his
fingers crammed them into his mouth, grunting like a Berkshire boar. Nor
did his anger cease thereafter, for this meal of meat had cost him five
piastres--the second meal of meat in a week.

As Wassef sat on the mastaba of the cafe sullen and angry, the village
barber whispered in his ear that Mahommed Selim and Soada had been
hunting jackals in the desert all afternoon. Hardly had the barber fled
from the anger of Wassef, when a glittering kavass of the Mouffetish at
Cairo passed by on a black errand of conscription. With a curse Wassef
felt in his vest for his purse, and called to the kavass--the being more
dreaded in Egypt than the plague.

That very night the conscription descended upon Mahommed Selim, and by
sunrise he was standing in front of the house of the Mamour with twelve
others, to begin the march to Dongola. Though the young man's father
went secretly to the Mamour, and offered him backsheesh, even to the tune
of a feddan of land, the Mamour refused to accept it. That was a very
peculiar thing, because every Egyptian official, from the Khedive down to
the ghafhr of the cane-fields, took backsheesh in the name of Allah.

Wassef the camel-driver was the cause. He was a deep man and a strong;
and it was through him the conscription descended upon Mahommed Selim--
"son of a burnt father," as he called him--who had gone shooting jackals
in the desert with his daughter, and had lost him his breakfast.
Wassef's rage was quiet but effective, for he had whispered to some
purpose in the ear of the Mamour as well as in that of the dreaded kavass
of conscription. Afterwards, he had gone home and smiled at Soada his