almost fearfully. He was muttering to himself like one suffering from an over-indulgence in Hashish, and I detected the words “Allahu akbar!” (God is most great) several times repeated.

“What ails you, Hassan, my friend?” I said; and noting how his gaze persistently returned to the melancholy procession wending its way towards the little Moslem cemetery:—“Was the dead man some relation of yours?”

“No, no, Kernaby Pasha,” he muttered gutturally, and moistened his lips with his tongue; “I was but slightly acquainted with him.”

“Yet you are much disturbed.”

“Not at all, Kernaby Pasha,” he assured me; “not in the slightest.”

By which familiar formula I knew that Hassan es-Sugra would conceal from me the cause of his distress, and therefore, since I had no appetite for further mysteries, I determined to learn it from another source.

40

“See to the loading of the donkey,” I directed him—for three sleek little animals were standing beside him, patiently awaiting the toil of the day.

Hassan setting about the task with a cheerful alacrity obviously artificial, I approached the native station master, with whom I was acquainted, and put to him a number of questions respecting his important functions—in which I was not even mildly interested. But to the Oriental mind a direct inquiry is an affront, almost an insult; and to have inquired bluntly the name of the deceased and the manner of his death would have been the best way to have learned nothing whatever about the matter. Therefore having discussed in detail the slothful incompetence of Arab ticket collectors and the lazy condition and innate viciousness of Egyptian porters as a class, I mentioned incidentally that I had observed a funeral leaving Rikka.

The station master (who was bursting to talk about this very matter, but who would have declined on principle to do so had I definitely questioned him) now unfolded to me the strange particulars respecting the death of one, Ahmed Abdulla, who had been a retired dragoman though some time employed as an excavator.

“He rode out one night upon his white donkey,” said my informant, “and no man knows whither he went. But it is believed, Kernaby Pasha, that it was to the Haram el-Kaddâb” (the False Pyramid)—extending his hand to where, beyond the belt of fertility, the 

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