If there was one glistening bead of sweat on the bald pate of Lacey of
Chicago there were a thousand; and the smile on his face was not less
shining and unlimited. He burst into the rooms of the palace where David
had residence, calling: "Oyez! Oyez! Saadat! Oh, Pasha of the Thousand
Tails! Oyez! Oyez!"

Getting no answer, he began to perform a dance round the room, which in
modern days is known as the negro cake-walk. It was not dignified, but
it would have been less dignified still performed by any other living man
of forty-five with a bald head and a waist-band ten inches too large.
Round the room three times he went, and then he dropped on a divan. He
gasped, and mopped his face and forehead, leaving a little island of
moisture on the top of his head untouched. After a moment, he gained
breath and settled down a little. Then he burst out:

"Are you coming to my party, O effendi?
There'll be high jinks, there'll be welcome, there'll be room;
For to-morrow we are pulling stakes for Shendy.
Are you coming to my party, O Nahoum?"

"Say, I guess that's pretty good on the spur of the moment," he wheezed,
and, taking his inseparable note book from his pocket, wrote the
impromptu down. "I guess She'll like that-it rings spontaneous. She'll
be tickled, tickled to death, when she knows what's behind it." He
repeated it with gusto. "She'll dote on it," he added--the person to
whom he referred being the sister of the American Consul, the little
widow, "cute as she can be," of whom he had written to Hylda in the
letter which had brought a crisis in her life. As he returned the note-
book to his pocket a door opened. Mahommed Hassan slid forward into the