So successfully had that past been sponged from Billy's concentrated heart, so utterly had other youth and beauty ceased to exist for him, that he greeted the reminder with belligerent unwelcome.
"I tell you it was all an accident," he retorted irritably. "There's nothing more to it.... Hello, our horseman is coming this way again!"
Grateful for the interruption to this ticklish excursion into his sacred emotions, he jumped to his feet and went out to meet the man who was riding slowly toward them, the two others in his train. Burroughs went with him, and a brief parley followed.
"He says," Burroughs translated, "that these are his camels and he is going to take them away. He says you stole them from him at Assiout."
"That's right," Billy confirmed easily. "He can have 'em," and Burroughs, vouchsafing no comment on this curious development, gave the message to the Nubian. Then he turned again to Billy. "He wants: the money for their hire."
"For their——! Of all the dad-blasted, iron-clad cheek! You just tell him for me that he'll get his 'hire' all right if he hangs around me. Tell him I'll have him arrested for molesting and robbing travelers; and tell him to tell his master that if he shows his head near an English girl again I'll have him hanged as high as Haman—and shot to pieces while he swings! The infernal scoundrel——"
Whatever work Burroughs made of this translation it sent the sullen, inscrutable-looking fellow off in silence, his followers leading the recovered camels.
"And may that be the last of them," said Billy B. Hill, in fervent thanksgiving. "Except Kerissen. I've got to meet him again—just once."
Perhaps it was the hairpins. Perhaps it was the bathed face and the sleep-brightened eyes and the rearranged gown. But certainly Burroughs stared in amazement at the slim little figure that issued from the entrance, and a queer, a very queer confusion seized upon him. Not even outrageous sunburn and pathetic blisters could hide Arlee's young loveliness. They only added an utterly upsetting tenderness to the beholder, and a most dangerous compassion.