204 I GO A -FISHING. 



strange that I apply to a Bedouin this phrase, which is 

 more frequently applicable to the dying features of Chris- 

 tian girls in Western homes. 



" His countenance was noble always. There is a head 

 of Christ, by Titian, in the Pitti Gallery at Florence, which 

 mayhap you have seen. The features are delicately out- 

 lined ; the coloring not Titianesque at all, but rather un- 

 certain and undecided. The face of Achmed reminded 

 me of that picture when I met him first, and on this morn- 

 ing it was unearthly in its serene splendor. 



"One might have thought him his father Ishmael, dying 

 on the desert that was his sole inheritance. No trap- 

 pings of royalty were around him, such as surround the 

 couches of princes of more wealthy lands. The lands of 

 this Duke of Edom were the barren desert, stretching 

 away in its wastes of rock and sand. His palace was 

 the ruined palace of a Roman governor, down through 

 the shattered front of which the blue sky reflected the 

 light of the coming day before the sun came up to shine 

 in Wady Mousa. The poor burnoose the rough cam- 

 el's-hair cloak that inswathed his form was the substi- 

 tute for the purple of a kingly death-bed ; but more ma- 

 jestic countenance never shone on living men than was 

 his as the dawn lit its thin features, and his father bent 

 over him to say that he was dying. 



" I know not what thoughts had possession of his mind, 

 or whether his countenance were indeed a fair indication 

 of his soul ; for his words were simple enough, but sub- 

 lime enough withal to express a consciousness of his no- 

 ble origin, and the splendor of his exit from the land of 

 his fathers on a sunny morning in the valley of Petra. 



" ' The Hakim saith you are not to live longer, my son 

 Achmed.' 



