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“Wert thou not ashamed of thyself?” asked Aziza Nurmahal, to be met by the counter question:

“Wouldst thou be ashamed to drink when thou art thirsty? Wah!”

He shrugged his fat shoulders, and continued.

It appeared that, with the tofanghees afraid to shoot and himself unable to for the simple reason that he had no weapon except his short dagger, the situation had reached an impasse; and so they had sat there, in the desert, carefully watching each other, the Arab never for a moment releasing his bearlike hold on Jane Warburton, when, riding as he had never ridden before, Mr. Ezra Warburton had arrived on the scene.

He was a business man, first, last, and all the time. At times unreasonable, at other times irritable and nervous, he always emerged from his fits of temper or despondency to be frankly practical.

Thus, seeing his daughter in the Arab's arms, he had at first rushed forward—to be pulled back by one of the tofanghees, Mansoor Khan, who spoke a little English and warned him that his daughter's life was at stake.

Then he had hurled a flood of epithets at the other's head which, being in English, affected the Arab as much as a buzzing of flies.

Finally, his business instinct had come to the fore, and he had discovered that the robber, too, was at heart a business man. So, with the tofanghee playing interpreter, the two business men had arrived at an agreement, by the terms of which—“a simple matter