many branches of our Church he has brought the homage of his vices, who can pretend to say? His religion is apparently like his language a part

of many, the whole of none; for one sees that the man is striving, with a small and feline art, to be all things to all tribes and sects: to the Italian a Catholic; to the Russian a Greek; to the Egyptian a Copt. To the English he would be a Protestant, but for the dread lest an attempt to claim spiritual kinship with an Oxonian or a Templar might result in his being thrashed. With a Bostonian, he would not scruple to profess himself an Evangelical convert

a brand plucked from the fire by an American Paul; while, to the Londoner, whom he thinks likely to hate him as a Papist and to despise him as a Greek, he is sly enough to pass muster as a pupil of the more humble Maronite Church.

Apart from his dubious creed, Yakoub (if I may speak of him now as he will appear when we have come to know him worse) has something in him of the thief, the bully, and the sneak, though enjoying these Syrian qualities only in a mean degree and exercising them for objects infinitely small. To wit: he will weave a long web of falsehoods that he may cheat you of a para, and will watch a whole night for the chance of robbing you of a cigarette. In his company, you dare not leave a knife, a cartridge, a comb, a quinine-bottle, a map, a shawl, a cigar-case, a handkerchief loose about your tent. Nothing is too hot for his mouth, too rough for his pouch. Yet, it would be a gross injustice to rank Yakoub with the thieves of countries like England,

Italy, and France: he is a man of the soil, even in his vices, and the rogueries which he loves to practise upon you are the growth of thousands of years. A Turpin on a Syrian road would filch your powder and tobacco, your salt and quinine, your razor and shirt, from the mere lust of possessing them: but Yakoub only pilfers as becomes an Arab lord of the soil, who, while condescending to lead you and feed you through his country, cannot help exercising his fascinations over your waifs and strays. With him, the act of thieving is that of a man taking his own by stratagem wherever he may chance to find it. These odds and ends of property these bits of leather, these pots of meat and sardines, these knives and spoons, these dustings of the powder-horn, these drainings of the brandy-flask - are his royalties, his flotsam and jetsam, his fines, his liveries, and his courts leet. Like so many of his wild countrymen, though he lives by travel, and prefers a tent to a house, he is a stranger to all those longings and sentiments which drive the Gaul and Saxon over the face of the earth. He thinks that a man who leaves his home for any other cause than that of finding better food and more abundant water, must be mad; and he regards the Frank masters whom he serves and cheats, as a number of restless spirits, cursed and driven forth into the desert to be the spoil and prey of God's chosen sons. Yet, the pleasure of cheating is, in his eye, greater than the gain. When filching from your store, is he not spoiling the Egyptian? In riches and in strength as a rider, as a shot he feels that he might meet with but

small success in a contest with the Frank; but in craft and skill he knows himself more than your match; and when he tithes your goods, believing you too dull to detect him in these petty frauds, his heart dilates with a peculiar pride and joy. Who is the superior then? You may daunt him by your daring, awe him by your pride; but can you deprive him of this Syrian consolation of seeing you made the daily victim of his more agile fingers and more crafty brain?

By calling himself a Christian, Yakoub escapes that service of arms which his soul abhors; but to make all things safe, and to win for himself many protectors, he appears to have accepted all the Churches at once, Roman and Coptic, Maronite and Greek. The lord of every creed, the slave of none, this Arab is a perfect pattern of obedience to the law. Often, in the early morning, when the camp was rising, and the sun was not, I have caught him at his devotions, not before an altar of the Virgin, but before the tomb of a Moslem sheikh. If he be an Ansayreh (as I more than suspect), he can hug himself with the thought that he is over-reaching both the devil and the Padishah saving his soul from Gehenna and his body from Hassan Bey.

A Christian in Syria, whether a true man or a false, while he rides his camel, shakes down his olives, and remains at peace with his sovereign and his neighbour, has no use for the sword. Even when the Maronites invade a Druse village, burn a few vines, lift a few cattle, and get beaten for their pains by fifty young men against three hundred,

they can call on the Turk from Damascus, the Zouave from Algiers, to defend them against the irate and avenging owners of fields which have been laid waste. Nor has a Maronite, in the view of men like Yakoub, any more need to be truthful and honest than he has to be brave. To fight is a Turk's business; to speak the truth is a Frank's business. To treat his word as a bond, a pledge to be kept at all costs, is a mystery of conduct which a Syrian leaves with his wondering contempt to the English and the Turks. More than once, when our tent had been pitched for the night near a well, among peasants and soldiers, Yakoub has replied to a caution about leaving such things on the mat as might tempt these natives to pilfer "Heugh! they are safe. Turk no take them; his religion not allow him to steal."

"What news of Akeel Aga this morning?"

"Bad news, Master," says Yakoub, who, knowing that the country is much disturbed, would rather hang on at Jaffa, doing nothing and being paid for it, until safer times "Akeel gone east, Akeel gone south; Akeel is the wind; to-day at Tiberias, to-morrow at Petra, next day at Suez; Turk nevér catch the wind, and never catch Akeel. Shall we start?"

"At ten o'clock."

CHAPTER IV.

Plain of Sharon.

AT twelve we are in the saddle, ploughing through the sand; three horses and a mule; one good revolver, a second so-so, the property of Yakoub, who begins firing it at dogs and eagles before we are clear of the mills and gardens; all my people mounted, save imp Ishmael, who, happy and alert in the possession of three piastres, runs on foot with the mule, saying, with a wicked grin, that he will run over to Ramleh and prepare our pipes.

We are all in high spirits and in perfect health. Before mounting our mares, we went to look for the place in which Tabitha, the Dorcas, the gazelle, as we should call her the darling, had been laid after her second death. Of course it was in a garden; almost equally of course this garden was the property of an American. How soon a young people learn to beat the old! Not a house in Jaffa is of greater age than the houses in Soho Square. Since the Apostle came over from Lydda, along this path, to raise Tabitha from the dead, Jaffa has been razed by Vespasian and Godfrey, by Saladin and the Egyptian sultans; these shores have been swept by Norseman, Greek and Venetian pirates, and by a rabble of conquerors, from the Persian and Ara