Cous cous had given way to good old English bacon and eggs and marmalade on the breakfast table of the Sheik Amut Ben Butler.

“Chief,” said the Sheik half-heartedly to Verbeena, slipping a piece of bacon to his big, dangerous Persian hound that Verbeena was in the habit of kicking around so freely, “would you mind if I had a friend come and stay for a bit?”

“What kind of a character may this be?” demanded Verbeena.

“A literary light, one nearly as large as a moon. He sells an awful lot of books.”

“Of whom are you speaking?” asked Queen Verbeena readily inducting the atmosphere.

“Robert,” the Sheik paused because he was very sure of his grounds, “Hitchings.”

“Literary men,” said Verbeena, “are usually terrible loafers and like late breakfasts but as to Mr. Hitchings I am agreeable. I am fully confident as regards Mr. Hitchings, I don’t mind saying. He is always interesting. I think it was reading his works which started me on this trip.”

“It rejoices me to have you so inclined,” said the Sheik. “And Bob will be pleased.”

“That’s up to him,” smiled Verbeena, taking a heavy smash at the marmalade. “Although I have every confidence that he will give little trouble. From his tales of passion I am certain he is well-behaved. But in view of the event I think, Amut, we should really move to a larger oasis. It’s possible he carries his adjectives with him.”

“Wonderfully thoughtful,” murmured the Sheik.

“What did you say?” asked Verbeena.

“I said, ‘Hello, kid!’”

“Hello,” said Verbeena.

To the Sheik her affability was immeasurably amazing.

The Ben Butlers had moved to Oasis No. 12. This was a suburb of Oudjda from whence, if you were out of things, you could always get breakfast at Guercif.

For three days Mr. Hitchings had been taking his meals and notes with the Ben Butlers.

His observations of the Sheik and Verbeena had moved his heart to pity. So that he had very little left when the Sheik was carried in by two men. A horse had refused to be trained and the Sheik A. Ben Butler was therefore invested with six broken ribs.

He breathed like a dice-box in full cry.

Verbeena prodded the Sheik somewhat and, deciding that he wouldn’t die, came into the outer tent and caused Mr. Hitchings to pause in the taking of his notes by pulling his chair from under him.

“Did you wish to speak to me?” said Mr. Hitchings under the chair and circumstances.

“A little, Robert. Who, you know, after all, is he?”

“You mean Sheik Amut?”

“I certainly,” said Verbeena, “am not discussing Velasquez, Amerigo Vespucci or Jack Dempsey. The yellow hair and the black whiskers are noticeably incompatible, don’t you think?”

“To be sure,” assented Mr. Hitchings. “Well then——” and he got red in the face. “I’ll tell you. It was this way:

“In the first place he hates the English.”

“I hadn’t noticed that,” said Verbeena.

“But he does—really. And why?”

Verbeena lifted her clubbed curls well off her ears.

“Why?”

For some reason or other she saw that Mr. Hitchings looked greatly distressed.

“Because—well, you see, his father was the Earl of Glucose but not a sticker for the proprieties. I might even say he drank freely. That was not a habit clearly to take into the Sahara. And when thus bedizened he sometimes failed in courtesy. Especially toward his wife. She was Spanish but unquestionably all her life long had walked normally. She was a bit of a Moor too. But new to sand-dunes. One evening the Earl of Glucose feeling like kicking about a bit selected his wife. He busied himself thus for some time.

“Then it would seem he kicked her so far that he couldn’t find her nor could she find herself and thus it was she happened upon the suburban oasis of Sheik Ben Butler, senior.

“A boy was born. Kicking just like his father.

“The Sheik did not send her to his harem but kept the Spanish lady with him hanging right around his neck until she died in his arms. Not promptly but nearly so.

“The truth now,” said the distinguished novelist, “is on the point of bursting forth!

“Amut is that woman’s son!”

“Mr. Hitchings!”

“I don’t wonder that you are surprised. Amut was too when he heard it. We all were! You see my father was in America at the time and the Sheik was in China and so they met. By the same chain of circumstances, Amut and I were both educated in Siberia. You understand? But even if you don’t, I don’t either. Still it is explanatory, is it not?”

“Mr. Hitchings!”

“Beg pardon.”

“Let me get you a fresh green carnation.”

She pinned it on him. They grow freely in the desert.

But she said emphatically:

“The story, sir, is wholly unworthy of you.”

“Good heavens!” said Mr. Hitchings in ineffable alarm. “This isn’t my stuff! How could you think it? How ridiculous of me to have permitted myself to be persuaded by Amut to try and put this over! I regret the attempt abysmally. Right now, hear me, fair lady: I wash my hands of the Hull thing!”

“Friendship may excuse this conduct of yours,” said Verbeena coldly. “But how, if you are also English, is it that Amut makes a friend of you?”

“Now, there’s something else again, isn’t it? Just as if a rebellious Sheik around here for an instant would make a bosom friend of a Frenchman. It’s a desperately silly story all the way through and I surely apologize and—O—what?”

Verbeena had seized both hands and just wouldn’t let go.

“Forget it,” she was saying. “I’ve something much more important.”

Her eyes flamed.

“Will you—O, will you, my dear Mr. Hitchings, do a moving picture for me?”

“I most certainly will,” replied Mr. Hitchings, “immediately—of a man packing his grip.”

“But I beg of you, who is he? For God’s sake, listen to a woman’s plea! Solve this mystery of me lord’s true identity!”

By this time, however, Mr. Hitchings had engaged the drawing room of a camel and was navigating the Sahara by means of the good, old, honorable North Star.