but it was he who told the guide everything. 'Never mind!' he would say. 'I know how it is without your telling me.' And it was true. He did!" Dr. Medjila laughed aloud and slapped his knee, he so enjoyed this recollection. "That fellow, he was rich! He said he guessed he knew how to lay out and build a town, and the Romans had done it the same way he would—only not so good!"
Ogle's instantaneous premonition was well-founded; and in a kind of despair he suffered a renewal of his previous conviction that it was impossible to be upon the same continent with Tinker and long escape him. "I should call that something of a Yawp," he said feebly.
"It was," Medjila admitted. "But it was like the Roman Yawp because it bragged of what was true. This fellow, he told us how much finer his own city was than Timgad—or than any other city, ancient or modern. He told us of all that was made there, of the 'public utilities' and of the climate that is owned there. But he had a great appreciation of Timgad too. He would look at the Arch of Triumph over yonder; then he would say, 'Yes, sir; they probably had to pay for that out of a bond issue; but of course they had to have it! They couldn't
