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He fell suddenly into a moody silence. I broke it by saying: “It was the sand-diviner?”

He looked at me sharply. “I don’t know.”

“You never found out?”

“At Beni-Mora the women go veiled,” he said harshly.

Suddenly I realised the horror of the situation: the deserted husband living on with his child in the midst of the ordained and close secrecy of Beni-Mora, where many of the women never set foot out of doors, and those who do, unless they are the public dancers, are so heavily veiled that their features cannot be recognised.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I searched, as far as one can search in an Arab town, and found out nothing. I wanted to tear the veil from every woman in the place; and then I was sent away from Beni-Mora.”

“By whom?”

“The French authorities, my own countrymen,” he laughed bitterly. “To save me from getting myself murdered, m’sieu.”

“You would have been.”

“Why not? Then I came here to keep the inn for the diligence that carries the mails to the south, for I wouldn’t leave the country till—-“

He paused.

“And the sand-diviner?”

“I left him at Beni-Mora. He smiled, and said he knew no more than I; and perhaps he didn’t. How was I to tell?”

“But your name of Fin Tireur?”

“Ah!”–the thing in his eyes glowed like a thing red-hot–“I’d been here eleven months when, one afternoon of summer, just near sunset, I heard a noise of drums beating and African pipes screaming, and the snarl of camels on the road you came to-night. I was in the house, in this room where we are sitting now, and little Marie was playing just outside by the well, so that I could see her through the window. By the sounds, I knew a great caravan was coming up, and passing towards the south. They always water at the well, and I stood by the window to see them. Little Marie stood too, shading her eyes with her bit of a hand. The drums and pipes got louder, and round the corner of the inn came as big a caravan as I’ve ever seen; near a hundred camels, horsemen, and led mules and donkeys, Kabyle dogs and goats, the music playing all the time, and a Caid’s flag flying in the front. They made for the well, as I knew they would, and little Marie stood all the while watching them. M’sieu, there were square packs on some of the camels, and veiled women on the packs.”

He looked across at me hard.

“Veiled women?” I repeated.

“When they got to the well they made the camels kneel for the women to get down; and one of the women, when she was down, caught sight of Marie standing there, with her little hand shading her eyes. That woman gave a great cry behind her veil. I heard it, m’sieu, as I stood by the window there, and I saw the woman run at the little one.”

He got up from his seat slowly, and stood by the wooden shutter, against which the sand was driven by the wind.

“In a place like this, m’sieu, one keeps a revolver here.”

He put his hand to a pocket at the back of his breeches, brought out a revolver, and pointed it at the shutter.

“When I heard the woman cry I took my revolver out. When I saw the woman run I fired, and the bullet struck the veil.”

He put the revolver back into his pocket, and sat down again quietly.

“And that’s why they call me Fin Tireur.”

I said nothing, and sat staring at him.

“When the camels had been watered the caravan went on.”

“But–but the Arabs——“

“The Caid had the body tied across a donkey–they told me.”

“You didn’t see?”

“No. I took the little one in. She was screaming, and I had to see to her. It was two days afterwards, when I was at the market, that a scorpion stung her. She was dead when I came back. Well, m’sieu, are you sorry you ate your supper?”

Before I could reply, the door opening into the courtyard gaped, and the driver entered, followed by a cloud of whirling sand grains.

“Nom d’un chien!” he exclaimed. “Get me a tumbler of wine, for the love of God, Fin Tireur. My throat’s full of the sand. Sacre nom d’un nom d’un nom!”

He pulled off his coat, turned it upside down, and shook the sand out of the pockets, while Fin Tireur went over to the corner of the kitchen where the bottles stood in a row against the earthen wall.