STEENBURGER'S STORY. 199 



pleasure to me to travel in the East without company, 

 such as I want in this room when I talk out my inmost 

 thoughts. I have heard men say that they liked to be 

 alone among old ruins, that they found invisible company, 

 and took delight in it. I went out to try it at Karnak 

 one night, alone. It was an Egyptian night, with a moon 

 almost full. The ruins were peopled with ghosts and 

 phantoms by the cross-lights in the great hall of columns. 

 I sat an hour in the grand aisle, then climbed to the top 

 of the old north wall, and looked over the waste of splen- 

 dor, all white and pure in that light. But as for enjoying 

 it, it was the most absolutely miserable evening of years 

 of travel, unless I except just such a night at Palmyra. It 

 was full of restless, uncomfortable, tumultuous thinking. 

 No one to speak to, and a tempest of thinking all the 

 time, which I suppose you might call involuntary think- 

 ing, with no one to think to." 



" I heard from Cairo that you had a row of some kind 

 near Wady Mousa. What was it all about? Who had 

 charge of your caravan ? Barikhat or Houssein or Sheik 

 Achmed ?" 



" Achmed, of course. I wrote you all about that from 

 Jerusalem." 



" Your letter never came." 



" Strange ; what can have become of all my letters ? 

 And you don't know that Achmed is dead ?" 



"Achmed? No. I saw him in 1870, and I thought 

 if any man would live a century it was Achmed Ben 

 Houssein." 



" Cold lead is bad for all constitutions alike." 



" Shot ?" 



" Yes, poor fellow, shot. He was the best man I ever 

 found among Bedouins. I always thought much of Ach- 



