"Ere sundown my lord will hear that a friend has died and his spirit is in the well of souls."
"Tell me of this friend, O my aunt!" Spence said in colloquial Arabic.
"Thy friend is a Frank, but more than a Frank, for he is one knowing much of this country, and has walked the stones of Jerusalem for many years. Thou wilt hear of his death from the lips of one who will tell thee of another thou seekest, and know not that it is he. . . . Give me back the stone, lord, and go thy way," she broke off suddenly, with seeming sincerity. "I will tell thee no more, for great business is in thy hands and thou art no ordinary wayfarer. Why didst thou hide it from me, Effendi?"
Drawing her blue head-dress over her face, the woman refused to speak another word.
Spence passed on, wondering. He knew, as all travellers who are not merely tourists know, that no one has ever been quite able to sift the fraud and trickery from the strange power possessed by those Eastern geomancers. It is an undecided question still, but only the shallow dare to say that all is imposture.[1]
And even the London journalist could not be purely materialistic in Jerusalem, the City of Sorrows.
He went on towards his destination. Not far from the missionary establishment was a building which was the headquarters of the Palestine Exploring Society in Jerusalem.
Cyril Hands had always lived up in Akra among the Europeans, but much of his time was necessarily spent in the Mûristan district.
- ↑ This particular instance of the Nurié is not all fiction. An incident much resembling it actually occurred to a well-known writer on the intimate life of Eastern peoples. For the purposes of the narrative the locale has been changed from the Jaffa Road—where the event took place—to Jerusalem itself.
