"You come to see me so early in the morning?" he enquired, sitting up in
bed and rubbing his eyes. "Now that's really nice of you."

One of the mules, he airily explained, had lost a shoe in the afternoon.
He would get it put right at once--at once.

"You might have told me so yesterday evening, instead of keeping me
awake all night waiting for you."

"True," he replied. "I thought of it at the time. But then I went to
bed, and slept. Ah, sir, it is good to sleep!" and he stretched himself
voluptuously.

The beast was shod, and at 5 a.m. we left.




XVIII

AFRICAN INTRUDERS


There is a type of physiognomy here which is undeniably Semitic--with
curly hair, dusky skin and hooked nose. We may take it to be of
Saracenic origin, since a Phoenician descent is out of the question,
while mediaeval Jews never intermarried with Christians. It is the same
class of face which one sees so abundantly at Palermo, the former
metropolis of these Africans. The accompanying likeness is that of a