of the village coffee, brought.  In a minute a dozen men came and sat round, and asked as usual, ‘Whence comest thou, and whither goest thou?’ and my gloves, watch, rings, etc. were handed round and examined; the gloves always call forth many Mashallah’s.  I said, ’I come from the Frank country, and am going to my place near Abu’l Hajjaj.’  Hereupon everyone touched my hand and said, ’Praise be to God that we have seen thee.  Don’t go on:  stay here and take 100 feddans of land and remain here.’  I laughed and asked, ’Should I wear the zaboot (brown shirt) and the libdeh, and work in the field, seeing there is no man with me?’ There was much laughing, and then several stories of women who had farmed large properties well and successfully.  Such undertakings on the part of women seem quite as common here as in Europe, and more common than in England.

I took leave of my new friends who had given me the first welcome home to the Saeed, and we went on to Keneh, which we reached early in the morning, and I found my well-known donkey-boys putting my saddle on.  The father of one, and the two brothers of the other, were gone to work on the railway for sixty days’ forced labour, taking their own bread, and the poor little fellows were left alone to take care of the Hareem.  As soon as we reached the town, a couple of tall young soldiers in the Nizam uniform rushed after me, and greeted me in English; they were Luxor lads serving their time.  Of course they attached themselves to us for the rest of the day.  We then bought water jars (the specialite of Keneh); gullehs and zees—­and I went on to the Kadee’s house to leave a little string of beads, just to show that I had not forgotten the worthy Kadee’s courtesy in bringing his little daughter to sit beside me at dinner when I went down the river last summer.  I saw the Kadee giving audience to several people, so I sent in the beads an my salaam; but the jolly Kadee sallied forth into the street and ‘fell upon my neck’ with such ardour that my Frankish hat was sent rolling by contact with the turban of Islam.  The Kadee of Keneh is the real original Kadee of our early days; sleek, rubicund, polite—­a puisne judge and a dean rolled into one, combining the amenities of the law and the church—­with an orthodox stomach and an orthodox turban, both round and stately.  I was taken into the hareem, welcomed and regaled, and invited to the festival of Seyd Abd er-Racheem, the great saint of Keneh.  I hesitated, and said there were great crowds, and some might be offended at my presence; but the Kadee declared ‘by Him who separated us’ that if any such ignorant persons were present it was high time they learnt better, and said that it was by no means unlawful for virtuous Christians, and such as neither hated nor scorned the Muslimeen, to profit by, or share in their prayers, and that I should sit before the Sheykh’s tomb with him and the Mufti; and that du reste,