The learned Professor Ducardanoy, and his assistant, Bouchardy, had been toiling along the desert's edge all day. They had hoped to reach the Algerian settlement of Nouvelle Saar-Louis before night, but the sun was getting near the blank western horizon of yellow sand, and the low mountain upon which Nouvelle Saar-Louis was built, the last southern foot-hill of the Atlas, was still some twenty miles away to the east.

"We shall have to camp here in the sand, and push on in the morning," said the learned Ducardanoy, who was, as all his contemporaries knew, the most renowned living chiropodist.

"I fear we shall," said the assistant, Bouchardy, who was not, it must be understood, an assistant in Ducardanoy's surgery, but merely an unscientific fellow who managed the magic-lantern, ate wool, and breathed fire, and did the other things which constituted the grand free entertainment preceding Ducardanoy's evening lectures on the science of chiropody, in the course of which he was accustomed to perform a few gratuitous operations with Ducardanoy's Corn Cure to prove its efficacy. "I fear we shall," said Bouchardy; "but what is that building a mile or so to the south? Perhaps we had better go there."

"Ah! ha!" said Ducardanoy, looking through a field-glass; "it is an old Roman tower. Undoubtedly it is, for there is nothing Moorish about it, and the Romans and French are the only people who have erected anything more substantial than tents in this part of Algeria."

"I think we had better go there," said Bouchardy, "and go rapidly, too. Look behind you."

Away off to the west, galloping along in the track of the setting sun, was a cavalcade of horsemen.

"Spahis," said Ducardanoy, calmly.

"Perhaps so," said Bouchardy. "Perhaps French cavalry, and perhaps Arab robbers. Who knows? It is best to be prepared. If you choose you may stay here to sleep in the sand to-night, and perhaps for all the nights thereafter forever; but as for me, I am going to the Roman castle," and he spurred on his horse and arrived at the tower some minutes after the learned Ducardanoy, who was better mounted than he, and, moreover, was not burdened with a magic-lantern and other appliances used in the free entertainment. They found the tower to be nothing more than a plain round edifice with a single upper chamber in it, reached by a flight of narrow winding stairs ascending in a gentle incline. Up these stairs they led their horses, as the Roman frontier guards had done centuries before, and then looked out of the loop-holes for the approaching enemy.

"We can easily keep any of them from coming up the stairs," said Bouchardy.

"And they can easily keep us from coming down," said Ducardanoy. "But perhaps they have not seen us."

They were soon satisfied on that score, for the cavalcade of horsemen—thirty-five wild desert Arabs—halted before the tower, and in broken French commanded the chiropodist and his assistant to surrender. This command was not obeyed. The Arabs laughed and picketed their horses, and after a little a caravan of camels bearing tents and women and children arrived, and the Arabs went into camp for the night.

"If they kill us, the French government will wipe them from the face of the earth," said Ducardanoy, along toward the middle of the night.

"If the French government finds it out. But the death of those scoundrels will not bring me to life," said Bouchardy. "I think it will be well to make a sortie."

"They would hear us taking the horses down; and if we start on foot we can't get so far away before daylight that they could not soon discover us by making scouts into the desert. Besides, I imagine that the entrance to the tower is guarded."

"When morning comes, I will eat wool and breathe fire and scare them away," said Bouchardy.

"To do that you must show yourself," said Ducardanoy. "And they will fill you full of lead while you are filling yourself with wool. But if we can scare them, it will be the only way we can get rid of them."

"I have it," said Bouchardy.

A moment later the sentinel at the foot of the town gave an exclamation of surprise, for there, opposite him, against the white walls of the Sheik's tent, in the midst of a blaze of light, stood a French soldier bowing to him. Promptly he sighted his ancient flint-lock, and sent a bullet between the soldier's eyes.

"Mashallah," said the sentinel, for the soldier kept on bowing, and the hole in his head moved from his nose to the roots of his hair and back again as he did so.

"The devil himself," said the sentinel: and even before he finished saying it, the soldier had vanished, and there stood the devil—a huge black fellow grinning and bowing.

Bang! went the sentinel's gun again, and by this time the whole camp was aroused and staring at the Sheik's tent, muttering and moaning the while. The tent flap opened and the Sheik himself stepped out, and immediately there appeared on the white robes across his broad chest a great bloody splash, in the midst of which shone a hideous death's head. A cry of terror arose, and the Arabs began scurrying about in the darkness, saddling their horses and camels, the women and children screaming, and in the midst of the confusion there appeared in a loop-hole of the tower the face of a man illuminated by the glow of the fire he was breathing. Picket-ropes and saddle-girths were dropped, and those who were not already mounted rushed away on foot.

"We took in more money from that entertainment than we ever did in a year from the sales of corn medicine after our ordinary entertainments," said Bouchardy. "They have left behind them forty camels, ten horses, twelve Damascus swords, six silver pipes, eighteen bales of silk, thirty-five gold bracelets, six dozen rings, eight gold inlaid bridles, and we haven't looked in the Sheik's treasure-chest yet. Let us abandon the profession of chiropody, and buy estates at Nouvelle Saar-Louis. It is a pleasant place to live in, and will be convenient for us in case we start out on other expeditions to be robbed by Arab tribes."

W.A. Curtis.