CHAPTER XXV. 
YUSEF DANCES THE HAAS. 
While we were looking at the ruins, Yusef came back from 
the village, which is a little way off on the slope of the hill, 
with news that he had found a lodging place for us at the 
house of his niece. By this time we began to have a sus¬ 
picion of Yusef’s nieces, he had so many all over Syria. At 
Batroun he had nieces, at Tripoli and Aheden he had nieces, 
and now here was another at Baalbek, and the strangest part 
of it was that they were all very pretty. However, as we had 
no prejudice against beauty, we followed our dragoman up 
into the village, where we found his niece and her husband 
living in a stone hut, rather a more decent sort of hovel than 
most of those in the neighborhood. It was, in truth, a very 
respectable little stone box covered over with mud, with a 
place for fire in one corner, and a great many little pockets in 
the walls all round, where there were stowed onions, tobacco, 
and sundry small notions for pleasure and sustenance. The 
host was an Arab of the country, a very good sort of fellow, 
who seemed to have but two objects in life to accomplish— 
one to see that his wife kept her face covered, and the other 
to keep the roof of his house from leaking; I hardly know 
which troubled him the most. The wife was a pretty buxom 
young woman, with fine black eyes and a beautiful mouth, 
which she took every opportunity to display, in spite of the 
vigilance of our host, who was constantly on the watch, when 
he was not on the top of the house. He kept a round stone 
—a piece of an old pillar found among the ruins—which he 
was almost continually rolling over the top of the house; 
sometimes he would roll it for an hour, and then come down 
