to be admired, with their wooly hair fluffed out at right angles to their head, for the occasion.  Some were corn-merchants, sitting leisurely before a heap of golden grain piled up loosely on the ground.  Others stood by patiently with their fowls or goats or camels, feeding them with green fodder; and others had vivid scarlet rugs and carpets of native make spread out on the uneven ground.  And all day long the noise of the merchants, and the cry of the fowls, and the groan of the camels, and the dust of the square, and the smoke of the cooking fires went up from the bazaar.

In one corner of it, on a square of blue carpet, spread beneath his camel’s nose, sat a merchant who had been observed to come early to the fair.  He appeared to be a man of some substance, for he was clothed, and the camel kneeling beside him was fat and sleek, and would easily make two of the thin camels of Khartoum.  Opposite him, sitting on his heels and holding out two lean hands to tend the small fire that smoked between them, was another, obviously poorer, from his smaller amount of dress and flesh.

“It is true:  your Merla is the pearl of the desert.  I have heard it from my mother,” observed the merchant reflectively.  “Still, think, my brother, a good riding camel that can be hired out to the Englishmen every day for thirty piastres the day; in a short time you will feed on goat’s flesh, and wear boots, with all that money.”

The black eyes of the listener sparkled, but he objected shrewdly enough.

“My daughter eats not as much as a camel, and the English want not a camel every day.”

The stranger, fat and comfortable-looking, with a certain amount of opulent Oriental good looks, waved his hand with a lordly gesture.

“Let it not be said that Balloon is an oppressor of the poor.  Give me the pearl, and this knife shall go with the camel, also this piece of blue carpet—­a noble offer, my brother; where will you find such another?”

He drew from his crimson sash a longish knife, keen-bladed, with trueblue, Eastern steel, and having a good bone-handle, on which the fingers clasped easily.  The other took the knife and gazed at it intently.

“’Tis but a poor thing,” he said at last, indifferently thrusting it into the cloths twisted round his waist.  “Yet the camel and the carpet may suit me, and, as you say, you need not the girl at present, I will agree, as I am a poor man, and the poor are ever under the heel of the rich.  The girl shall be sent to your house on your return.”

“I go now northwards, and shall return by the full moon; disappoint me not, Krino or it shall be evil for you.”

“I disappoint no man,” replied Krino calmly, taking over from the other the string of the camel, and the fine beast turned its dark, soft head, and looked with liquid eyes on its new owner.

The sky began to show an orange and crimson glow behind the palms, and many cooking-fires now gleamed like spots of blood upon the sand, and the figures still came and went, and talked and bartered, for the goods were not nearly all sold, and the heaps of fine corn were still high in many places, and the fair would go on to-morrow and the next day.  But Krino got up and took his way homeward, exulting over his bargain, and leading the camel.