ably, he felt a little actual affection for them and knew he should often wonder about them and never forget them, although he had but this glimpse of them and was never to see them again. They were two merry yet wistful queer figures such as Wonderland Alice, wandering in Africa, might have encountered, he thought; and Miss Olivia Tinker was almost as odd as they were to have wished him to hear from Medjila that her father was really a Roman!
That idea belonged indeed to an archæologist who had no place except in a book of airiest whimsy; but as Laurence thought again he was not so sure; for he remembered how he had seen from the minaret in Biskra the return of the caravan from Sidi Okba in the Desert. He remembered how the figure of Tinker in his scarlet robe, riding in barbaric pomp upon the great white camel at the head of the caravan, had at first seemed ridiculous; but as he came nearer with his wild escort in tumult about him and princely rulers upon his right and left, and himself careless of both tumult and princes, there had appeared to be something formidable—something of the great Carthaginian—about such a man. But Medjila would not have him Carthaginian: he had
