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They were now making for a rock-village, which would take them slightly out of their direct route, but from Abdul's account of the place Michael thought that the delay would be well worth while. A short extension of their journey could make but little difference to the finding of the treasure. The village was a subterranean one; its streets and dwelling-houses were cut out of the desert-rock.

On a green height a ruined castle and its vassal rock-village seemed to have fallen from the top and been arrested by some miracle halfway down. Beneath, a peninsula of pines silvered with olives floated on a sea of burnished gold; and above soared mountains that went billowing away to the east and to Italy, deep purple-red in the wine of sunset.

Such depressing influences cannot but wear down the noblest calling. Sicily is tamed, and Circassia, the Asiatic Kabylia, nearly so. A recent French tourist in Algeria was much struck with certain resemblances between the two mountain-races separated by the length of the Mediterranean and the Euxine. At the Kabyle rock-village of Tighil-boukbair the town band turned out to receive him.

But when the sudden darkness of the southern evening had warned them that it was time to go, he began in the same strain again, after they had left the tunnelled streets of the rock-village. It was so dark that Vanno had the excuse of saving Mary a stumble on the rough cobblestones, as they went slowly down the mule path. He held her tightly, his arm around her waist.