Marie shrugged her plump shoulders.
"I've never seen him here before. He looks to me like an Englishman."
With renewed interest the youth studied the distant figure, hate smouldering in his black eyes.
So he was one of the nation who had murdered his father! This man who had insulted him.
But, for all his hatred of the Englishman, reluctantly he admired his coolness and his clothes.
The world had enlarged for Annette Le Breton's son since his first experience with the English.
On escaping from Barclay, with the remaining handful of the defunct Sultan's following, he had returned to El-Ammeh, at the age of fourteen its recognised ruler.
The boy was not lacking in sense. Defeat at the hands of both British and French made him decide to give up what had been the late Sultan's chief source of income—marauding. With a wisdom beyond his years, Casim Ammeh, as he was now always called, decided to go in for trading; and before many years had passed he saw it was a better paying game than marauding, despite its lack of excitement.
Then he extended his operations.
There were always caravans coming to his desert city, and a great demand for articles that came from the Europe his mother had told him of.