He felt in the leathern wallet which swung at his side upon a silk orange-coloured cord. He had ten dollars in that wallet. He walked in the rear of the travellers to Mequinez, and reached the town just before sunset. He went at once to the great square by the Renegade’s Gate, where the horses are brought to roll in the dust on their way to the watering fountain.
There were many there at the moment; and the square was thick with dust like a mist.
But, through the mist, in a corner, Dimoussi saw the tents of the travellers, and, in front of the tents, from wall to wall, a guard of soldiers sitting upon the ground in a semicircle.
Dimoussi was in no hurry. He loitered there until darkness followed upon the sunset, and the stars came out.
He saw lights burning in the tents, and, through the open doorway one, the man who had spoken to him, Arden, stretched upon a lounge-chair, reading a paper which he held in his hand.
Dimoussi went once more to the Fondak Henna, and made up for the wakeful night he had passed here with a Moor of the Sherarda tribe by sleeping until morning with a particular soundness.
II
The paper which Arden was reading was the faded letter written at “Berry Street, St. James’s” on April 14, 1684, by the James Challoner who had returned to the wife of Luke Challoner who had turned renegade.
Arden took a literal copy of that letter; and it is printed here from that copy:
“Berry Street, St. James’s,