“‘Alone upon the house-tops,’” he began.  Then he laughed and clambered hurriedly down the steep hill-side.  “It’s the moonlight,” he explained to the blank walls and overhanging lattices, “and the place and the music of the song.  It might be one of the Arabian nights, and I Haroun al Raschid. And if I don’t get back to the hotel I shall make a fool of myself.”

He reached the Albion very warm and breathless, with stumbling and groping in the dark, and instead of going immediately to bed told the waiter to bring him some cool drink out on the terrace of the smoking-room.  There were two men sitting there in the moonlight, and as he came forward one of them nodded to him silently.

“Oh, good-evening, Mr. Meakim!” Holcombe said, gayly, with the spirit of the night still upon him.  “I’ve been having adventures.”  He laughed, and stooped to brush the dirt from his knickerbockers and stockings.  “I went up to the palace to see the town by moonlight, and tried to find my way back alone, and fell down three times.”

Meakim shook his head gravely.  “You’d better be careful at night, sir,” he said.  “The governor has just said that the Sultan won’t be responsible for the lives of foreigners at night ’unless accompanied by soldier and lantern.’”

“Yes, and the legations sent word that they wouldn’t have it,” broke in the other man.  “They said they’d hold him responsible anyway.”

There was a silence, and Meakim moved in some slight uneasiness.  “Mr. Holcombe, do you know Mr. Carroll?” he said.

Carroll half rose from his chair, but Holcombe was dragging another toward him, and so did not have a hand to give him.

“How are you, Carroll?” he said, pleasantly.

The night was warm, and Holcombe was tired after his rambles, and so he sank back in the low wicker chair contentedly enough, and when the first cool drink was finished he clapped his hands for another, and then another, while the two men sat at the table beside him and avoided such topics as would be unfair to any of them.

“And yet,” said Holcombe, after the first half-hour had passed, “there must be a few agreeable people here.  I am sure I saw some very nice-looking women to-day coming in from the fox-hunt.  And very well gotten up, too, in Karki habits.  And the men were handsome, decent-looking chaps—­Englishmen, I think.”

“Who does he mean?  Were you at the meet to-day?” asked Carroll.

The Tammany chieftain said no, that he did not ride—­not after foxes, in any event.  “But I saw Mrs. Hornby and her sister coming back,” he said.  “They had on those linen habits.”