"You see I am giving myself full tether in this execrable land," he said.
"Indeed you are," I answered.
"Well, as the Romans in Rome, you know—it was what I came for," he said.
"Take care," I replied. "Take care."
He drew up shortly and said, "By the way, I ought to be ashamed to meet you."
I thought he ought, but for courtesy I asked him why.
"Because," he said, "I have failed to act up to my principles."
"In what?" I inquired.
"In saving the life of a scoundrel at the risk of my own," he answered.
Then he told me his story. "I left Tangier," he said, "with four men in my caravan, but it did not suit me to bring them into Fez, so I dismissed them a day's ride from here, paying in full for the whole journey and making a present over. My generosity was a blunder. The Moor can not comprehend an act of disinterested kindness, and I saw the ruffians lay their heads together to find out what it could mean. Three of them gave it up and went off home, but the fourth determined to follow the trace. His name was Larby."