Bargain and sale are concluded before the morning walk is over.  The village folk send a deputation carrying baskets of eggs and charcoal, with earthen jars of milk or butter, fresh vegetables, and live chickens.  I stayed one morning to watch the procedure.

The eldest of the party, a woman who seems to be eighty and is probably still on the sunny side of fifty, comes slowly forward to where Salam sits aloof, dignified and difficult to approach.  He has been watching her out of one corner of an eye, but feigns to be quite unconscious of her presence.  He and she know that we want supplies and must have them from the village, but the facts of the case have nothing to do with the conventions of trading in Sunset Land.

“The Peace of the Prophet on all True Believers.  I have brought food from Mediunah,” says the elderly advance-guard, by way of opening the campaign.

“Allah is indeed merciful, O my Aunt,” responds Salam with lofty irrelevance.  Then follows a prolonged pause, somewhat trying, I apprehend, to Aunt, and struggling with a yawn Salam says at length, “I will see what you would sell.”

She beckons the others, and they lay their goods at our steward’s feet.  Salam turns his head away meanwhile, and looks out across the Atlantic as though anxious to assure himself about the state of agriculture in Spain.  At last he wheels about, and with a rapid glance full of contempt surveys the village produce.  He has a cheapening eye.

“How much?” he asks sternly.

[Illustration:  In Tangier]

Item by item the old dame prices the goods.  The little group of young married women, with babies tied in a bundle behind them, or half-naked children clinging to their loin-cloths, nods approval.  But Salam’s face is a study.  In place of contemptuous indifference there is now rising anger, terrible to behold.  His brows are knitted, his eyes flame, his beard seems to bristle with rage.  The tale of prices is hardly told before, with a series of rapid movements, he has tied every bundle up, and is thrusting the good things back into the hands of their owners.  His vocabulary is strained to its fullest extent; he stands up, and with outspread hands denounces Mediunah and all its ways.  The men of the village are cowards; the women have no shame.  Their parents were outcasts.  They have no fear of the Prophet who bade True Believers deal fairly with the stranger within their gates.  In a year at most, perhaps sooner, “Our Master the Sultan” will assuredly be among these people who shame Al Moghreb,[2] he will eat them up, dogs will make merry among their graves, and their souls will go down to the pit.  In short, everything is too dear.