“I have told the truth—­Zeitoon—­caves—­boar—­antelope—­wild boar.  I am a very good guide.  You shall pay me handsomely.”

“Sure, we’ll ante up like foreigners.  But why do you make the proposal?  What’s behind it?”

“I never saw you until this afternoon.  You are Eenglis sportmen.  I can show good sport.  You shall pay me.  Could it be simpler?”

It seemed to me we had been within an ace of discovery, but the man’s mind had closed again against us in obedience to some racial or religious instinct outside our comprehension.  He had been on the verge of taking us into confidence.

“Let the sportmen think it over,” he said, getting up.  “Jannam!  (My soul!) Effendi, when I was a younger man none could have made me half such a sportmanlike proposal without an answer on the instant!  A man fit to strike the highway with his foot should be a judge of men!  I have judged you fit to be invited!  Now you judge me—­the Eye of Zeitoon!”

“What is your real name?”

“I have none—­or many, which is the same thing!  I did not ask your names; they are your own affair!”

He stood with his hand on the door, not irresolute, but taking one last look at us and our belongings.

“I wish you comfortable sleep, and long lives, effendim!” he said then, and swung himself out, closing the door behind him with an air of having honored us, not we him particularly.  And after he had gone we were not at all sure that summary of the situation was not right.

We lay awake on our cots until long after midnight, hazarding guesses about him.  Whatever else he had done he had thoroughly aroused our curiosity.

“If you want my opinion that’s all he was after anyway!” said Will, dropping his last cigarette-end on the floor and flattening it with his slipper.

“Cut the cackle, and let’s sleep!”

We fell asleep at last amid the noise of wild carousing; for the proprietor of the Yeni Khan, although a Turk, and therefore himself presumably abstemious, was not above dispensing at a price mastika that the Greeks get drunk on, and the viler raki, with which Georgians, Circassians, Albanians, and even the less religious Turks woo imagination or forgetfulness.

There was knife-fighting as well as carousal before dawn, to judge by the cat-and-dog-fight swearing in and out among the camel pickets and the wheels of arabas.  But that was the business of the men who fought, and no one interfered.

Chapter Two “How did sunshine get into the garden?  By whose leave came the wind?”

A TIME AND TIMES AND HALF A TIME