Etienne to drive on to the inn at Timgad. Darkness had fallen before they reached it; and that night he saw nothing of the city the Romans had built, and Olivia Tinker, some eighteen centuries later, recommended to his attention.
Outside there was a wind-swept starlight; but he kept under shelter, and, as he dined, regaled himself a little with the singular appearance of the other guests of the inn. There were only two, a man of sixty and a girl in her twenties dining together at a small table and talking eagerly in a language so beset with outlandish consonants that Ogle could by no manner of means identify it or guess the nationality of the speakers—nor was he assisted by their peculiarities of dress, which to his eyes seemed extreme. The man had a large head, with thick white hair and a lined, round face, sunburned but rosy, not tanned; his intelligent small hazel eyes, in constant quick motion behind silver spectacles, were shrewd and kindly; unquestionably this was an occidental head. But upon it there was a tall red fez with a long black tassel; and underneath a jacket of Scotch rough tweed this fanciful old person wore a tunic of green silk embroidered with small red flowers. As a final eccentricity, his trousers of brown
