What have you to say for yourself, you eventless Howadji, whose only adventure up to this moment is ignominiously tumbling off MacWhirter at the instant of starting?

Softly, softly, good my friends! When I saw the seven Arabs with spears and matchlocks coming slowly toward us-

What! have you had adventures?
had adventures? Come, Dick,

wake up! Billy Kirby's going to die!

CHAPTER XVI.

ARMA VIRUMQUE CANO.

THE next morning the venerable Armenian halted in a grove of palms, and waited until we came up. We found a strange man in fierce altercation with him.

"He insists upon having the camel," said the Armenian.

It was a grim Bedoueen, and he clung to the halter of the disputed beast with inexorable tenacity. By what right?" inquired the Howadji.

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"He says he sold it, eight years ago, to the Armenian's Shekh, for six hundred piastres, and not a para has yet been paid; so he will take the camel," explained Golden Sleeve, between his morning whiffs.

And this was the reason the Shekh would not come farther than El Harish?"

"Probably, gentlemen."

"Well ? "

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'Well, he must not take him," said the Commander, with the air of the "Lord of three seas."

The old Armenian was evidently sadly perplexed. He rode up and down on his docile little white mare, and shot off volleys of mild oaths at the grim Bedoueen, with the air of a city merchant stopped on the road with his family, who deems it incumbent upon him to be brave and chivalrous, but who would be very sorry to provoke unpleasant consequences.

"Oh! Kooltooluk! (Oh! Thunder !) let the camel go!" said he, from a little distance, to the Bedoueen; "we can't stop here."

The grim Bedoueen grasped the halter more firmly, and broke out into shrill objurgations and threats.

Khadra looked placidly out of her nest, as if life and its chances were but a play, to be enjoyed from a palanquin.

I turned MacWhirter toward the mother, and suggested, very slowly and distinctly, "Mi rincresce molto, Signora," (I am very sorry for all this, Madam).

"Si, non capisco, Signore," (Yes, sir, I don't understand), blandly retorted the lady;-and I turned MacWhirter back again.

There was a tumultuous quarrel after this, during which I rode forward, and awaited the result. The caravan presently followed; and the Pacha told me that the Bedoueen had retired into the desert, announcing his intention of returning with seven other devils worse than himself, and of capturing the camel, if necessary, by force of arms.

By force of arms? Here was "worshipful intelligence." Here was the gauntlet deliberately thrown down by the "wild tribes of the desert."

By force of arms? And I reflected with excusable pride upon following Perkyn Pastor's Petra romance, with another, commencing-"Yes, and when the Arabs came down upon us, near El Harish." I kindled with the thought. Stale seemed the life of cities

sang I.

"O give me but my Arab steed,"

I. The boundless desert, and combat hand to hand Ho! St. George for merrie England! shouted I, battering MacWhirter's neck with my cane.

What's the matter?" asked the Pacha.

"In what order shall we give battle?" replied I.

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What battle?" said the exasperated Pacha.

Sure enough, what battle?

The Howadji plodded on silently. At length Mohammad came up, and asked-

"What will the gentlemen do?"

"Give instant battle," replied I, battering Mac Whirter's neck with renewed vigour.

The Pacha had no words for me, but he inquired of the Commander if the Arab would return.

"Most certainly," he replied.

"He and his friends will try to take the camel." "Will the old gentleman resist? "

The Howadji held a council, and agreed, that, as allies of the venerable Armenian and of his beautiful daughter, they were bound in honour to maintain his cause.

But it was perfectly clear that he was in the wrong. He had been deceived certainly, but we learned that he did not doubt the justice of the Arab's claim; and happily being beyond civilised lands and legal conventions, there was no pretence that persistence in wrong-doing "outlawed" justice and common sense. There was no casuist or doctor of civil law at hand, to show that as the cameldriver had retained the beast, and had enjoyed the use and profit of it for eight years, that, therefore,