'What are those other ways? Instruct us, O beloved!' I put in, to save Rashîd from feeling lonely under blame for ignorance.
'No truly great one ever argues with a crowd. He chooses out one man, and speaks to him, him only,' said Suleymân; and he was going to tell us more, but just then something in the wadi down below the village caught his eye, and he sat up, forgetting our dilemma.
'A marvel!' he exclaimed after a moment spent in gazing. 'Never, I suppose, since first this village was created, have two Franks approached it in a single day before. Thou art as one of us in outward seeming,' he remarked to me; 'but yonder comes a perfect Frank with two attendants.'
We looked in the direction which his finger pointed, and beheld a man on horseback clad in white from head to foot, with a pith helmet and a puggaree, followed by two native servants leading sumpter-mules.
'Our horses are in need of water,' growled Rashîd, uninterested in the sight. 'It is a sin for those low people to refuse it to us.'
'Let us first wait and see how this newcomer fares, what method he adopts,' replied Suleymân, reclining once more at his ease.
The Frank and his attendants reached the outskirts of the village, and headed naturally for the spring. The fellâhîn, already put upon their guard by Rashîd's venture, opposed them in a solid mass. The Frank expostulated. We could hear his voice of high command.
'Aha, he knows some Arabic. He is a missionary, not a traveller,' said Suleymân, who now sat up and showed keen interest. 'I might have known it, for the touring season is long past.'
He rose with dignified deliberation and remounted. We followed him as he rode slowly down towards the scene of strife. When we arrived, the Frank, after laying about him vainly with his riding-whip, had drawn out a revolver. He was being stoned. His muleteers had fled to a safe distance. In another minute, as it seemed, he would have shot some person, when nothing under Allah could have saved his life.
Suleymân cried out in English: 'Don't you be a fool, sir! Don't you fire!'