vast turban covered his small head and cast a shadow over his delicate
and venerable features.

The Egyptian guide who rode on a brisk little ass by his side, looked up
frequently and with evident pleasure at the merchant's face--not in
itself a handsome one with its hollow cheeks, meagre beard and large
aquiline nose--for it was lighted up by a pair of bright eyes, full of
attractive thoughtfulness and genuine kindness. But that this fragile-
looking man, in whose benevolent countenance grief and infirmities had
graven many a furrow, could not only command but compel submission was
legible alike in his thin, firmly-closed lips and in the zeal with which
his following of truculent and bearded fighting men, armed to the teeth,
obeyed his slightest sign.

His Egyptian attendant, the head of the Hermeneutai--the guild of the
Dragomans of that period--was a swarthy and surly native of Memphis;
whenever he accidentally came too close to the fierce-looking riders of
the dromedaries he shrunk his shoulders as if he expected a blow or a
push, while he poured out question and answer to the Merchant Haschim,
the owner of the caravan, without timidity and with the voluble
garrulity of his tribe.

"You seem very much at home here in Memphis," he observed, when the old
man had expressed his surprise at the decadence and melancholy change in
the city.

"Thirty years ago," replied the merchant, "my business often brought me
hither. How many houses are now empty and in ruins where formerly only
heavy coin could secure admittance! Ruins on all sides!--Who has so
cruelly mutilated that fine church? My fellow-believers left every