"Your turn comes," said Dicky, flashing a look of friendly humour at him.
"America is putting her hand in the dough--through you. You'll know, and
your country'll know, what's going on here in the hum of the dim bazaars.
Ismail's got to see how things stand, and you've got to help me tell him.
You've got to say I tell the truth, when the French gentlemen, who have
their several spokes in the Egyptian wheel, politely say I lie. Is it
too much, or too little, Yankee?"

Renshaw almost gulped. "By Jerusalem!" was all he could say. "And we
wonder why the English swing things as they do!" he growled, when his
breath came freely.

Abdalla had finished his prayers; he was coming towards them. Dicky went
to meet him.

"Abdalla, I'm hungry," he said; "so are you. You've eaten nothing since
sunset, two days ago."

"I am thirsty, saadat el basha," he answered, and his voice was husky.

"Come, I will give you to eat, by the goodness of God."

It was the time of Ramadan, when no Mahommedan eats food or touches
liquid from the rising to the going down of the sun. As the sunset-gun
boomed from the citadel, lids had been snatched off millions of cooking-
pots throughout the land, and fingers had been thrust into the meat and
rice of the evening feast, and their owner had gulped down a bowl of
water. The smell of a thousand cooking-pots now came to them over the
walls of the mosque. Because of it, Abdalla's command to the crowd to
leave had been easier of acceptance. Their hunger had made them