against the Bedouins; but as I gaze at it, it seems spectral and unreal.

At length, on the fourth day of our desert journey, we sight the long oasis line of Bagdad. The golden dome of a mosque and a minaret glisten in the centre of a palm grove. A long avenue of palms tempers for a while the burning heat of the sun. We cross the Tigris over a shaky bridge crowded with pedestrians, horsemen, carts, Arabs, Indians, and Persians. The Tigris is different from the Euphrates. Greenish and slimy, sluggish and gurgling, it seems like an exotic foreigner after the majestic repose and dignity of its companion river.

Bagdad retains nothing of her old pomp and magnificence. The Tatar invasions of the Middle Ages and the constant warfare with the Persians have laid the city in ruins so many times that nothing remains to recall the old capital of the Caliphs. Modern Bagdad is a commercial town, an Arab city of brick buildings, which seem like provisional structures erected in anticipation of a possible change. The perpetual heat of the Persian Gulf rests heavily on the place. People walk slowly and indolently through the streets. They are Arabs of an alien stock, apparently mixed with other races, and phlegmatic and dull. A person cannot like them because, though they are Arabs, yet they have nothing of the beauty and stateliness of other Arabs. Their faces are ugly and scowling. Their bodies are angular and graceless in their long robes. They wear black-and-white kaffiyehs. Whenever I saw a handsome Arab face it was invariably under a bright-colored, red or red-and-white headcloth, indicating that the man was not a native but a visitor from the desert - from Syria or Central Arabia.

And yet these men convey an impression of power the power of hatred.

A European feels this hatred almost as if it were a blast against his face. The people hate England and identify England with all Europe. A burning desire for freedom has become an obsession. Perhaps it is this obsession that gives the people their glowering, scowling faces.

Hatred and heat! The heat is never broken; evening does not cool the air, which retains its dull, throbbing torridity until a new sun floods the street like incandescent metal. The people sleep on the roofs. Until late at night a shrill joyless music makes rest impossible.

I was in the big bazaar making a purchase when I suddenly heard a wild cry from one of the dimly lighted, sheltered passages. A moment later a man rushed past, followed by a second and a third. There was a sound of clattering hoofs, a mounted man charged past, his face distorted with terror. Little knots of people, running as if for their lives, followed him. They came from all directions and were joined by the bystanders. A cart, still half filled with goods, drove by with the horses at a gallop. Here and there a shrill shriek rose where someone fell or a child was trodden upon.

What had happened? No answer. Pale faces everywhere. The traders were putting up their shutters with desperate haste. Somewhere in the distance I heard the smash of crockery. Then followed a moment of utter silence—just as before an earthquake - broken only by the distant footsteps of a running man, the call of a woman, or the panic-stricken crying of a child.

Far away, very far away I heard the hum of shouting men and a rattling sound as if someone were throwing dry beans on the ground. Machine-guns! Revolt! A Bagdad riot! The people desperately resisting the friendship of a great European Power!

PEOPLE often say to me, 'Oh, Miss Parviss, you must have had psychic experiences! You've got just the eyes that see things—you have really.'

Once at a Christmas party at the Baldwins', when they turned down the gas and pretended to tell ghost stories, Nancy Baldwin's married sister from Dublin seized hold of my elbow. 'Miss Judith,' she whispered, 'you could make us creep and shiver if you only would. You 're so remote. You know heaps that we don't.'

But they're wrong. At least, I think they are. All our family, except Carrie, have no-colorish eyes like mine, and a calm holding-in manner; but we 've never, so far as I know, seen anything worse than our own reflections.

Curiously enough, the only symptom of mystery that ever came my way concerned Carrie herself. Carrie was n't remote. Good gracious! She 'd have made friends with a rhinoceros if he 'd let her, and her thoughts went darting about in her face like goldfish in a pool. Mother had died when she was born, as if the effort of bringing a real beauty into the world after us three plain ones was too much for her. And Carrie's beauty, I'm bound to say, went right through soaked into her, so to speak.

When young Herriot came back from India after five years, and shot over our farm with his father, he said, 'Carrie has n't altered a scrap. I believe she 'd coddle a kariat if she thought it had tummy-ache.' A kariat is a nastyish snake they have out there,

and his chaff just meant that the twenty-year-old girl could no more bear to see anything hurt than the fifteen-year-old flapper who used to tear about the fields with him. Every animal on the farm down to the smallest duckling was Carrie's pet. She never touched meat for all she looked so bonny; and she was just as 'mothery' and loving to her family, though she was the youngest — nursing us day and night if we needed it, and making peace in all our borders, as old Mr. Jey, the Rector, used to say. He'd christened and prepared her for Confirmation, and always declared she was one of the lesser saints, and ought to be beatified or sanctified, or whatever they do.

She made nothing of battling up to the Rectory through sleet on a December night, if she knew the old gentleman had one of his headaches, to see if she could run any messages for him. I well remember his saying to me as we came out of Sunday School one afternoon, Carrie was walking on ahead like the Pied Piper in petticoats with the children dangling after her, 'Judith, someone we won't specify must find your little sister a hard nut to crack I never can discover a weak place in her armor myself!'

And honestly I don't believe she had one. The Rector had just gone off for his summer holiday, I remember, when Hector Torrance appeared on the scene. He was an artist. They 're not uncommon with us, for our Wye scenery entices them, especially in the

spring. Dad discovered him painting Rundle's Mill and, being one of the hospitable sort, brought him in to tea. After that he was made free of The Pollards and came in whenever he liked, which was often. I took a turn against him right off; yes, I did, though the others simply raved about his looks and cleverness, and got maudlin about him because he said he was alone in the world.

But I'm like that sometimes. Perhaps it's why my eyes were made a bit prominent to see farther into people than ordinary eyes. I could n't pick out what offended me exactly Mr. Torrance's manners were perfect - but it was something about the curve of his upper lip. Straight it was, with a little sneer at one corner; and the way he stroked Flurry, our Aberdeen, put my back up. Williejohn was quite annoyed with me and declared I was getting old-maidish and put out prickles when new folk were about. Perhaps I did; and anyway I never cared greatly for men, but I can read little signs on their faces as clearly as I can read print, if that 's what they call being psychic. And I knew for certain that people who gloated in torture chambers or turned thumbscrews in Inquisition times had upper lips like Hector Torrance.

And once I was near him when a hare which the beagles had been coursing died on our lawn. It was pitifulits struggles and shrieking, and the poor, weak, frightened head turned this way and that as if it were looking for one friend. Carrie was n't there, thank God! but Hector Torrance was, and he liked it not the excitement or the shouting, but the pain. Why even Dad, who was no more squeamish than most farmers, said it was loathsome and made him sick; and Hector pretended to agree with him. But he could n't deceive me.

He always ran up to London for the week-end, but all that summer, from Monday till Saturday, he was constantly in and out of The Pollards; and it was soon as plain as a rook's nest in December that he came after Carrie. I will be fair. I think from the first she had a fascination for him far beyond the ordinary fascination of a pretty girl for a man.

Often on hot evenings, when the six of us were sitting at the edge of the big zinnia bed with our backs to the plantation, he would let his clasped hands fall between his knees and watch her just watch her. I cannot tell you why his expression as he did so brought to my mind the Bible king who refused to go into battle without counting the cost, you wouldn't connect Hector Torrance with the Bible, as a rule, but so it did. It seemed to me that he found something I can't just express it but something obstructive in Carrie - something that he 'd have to fight a way through with gimlets and iron bars. I have often wondered since how far she was in love with him, and how far he hypnotized and mesmerized and compelled her to be. That he meant to marry her from the moment he set eyes on her I have not the slightest doubt.

Very soon it seemed that events were chasing each other in a whirl, as you may say - making you giddy.

To begin with, Hector and Carrie got engaged with the full consent of Dad glamoured, Dad was, or he 'd have made more inquiries about his future son-in-law-and good-natured chaffing from the others.

'Can't you wish me happiness, Judy, dear?' Carrie said on the night it was announced, sort of pleading with me. I was sitting on the edge of my bed we shared a room kicking off my slippers, and she came and sat beside me and put an arm round my shoulder.

'I can wish it you, dearie,' I said, 'and I do' - I stopped, and she drew in her breath very quickly.

'But you don't think I'll get it?' And I did n't answer, but got up and began to brush my hair.

Then the whole affair of the wedding was so unaccountable. It makes my head swim sometimes when I try to sort it out and ask myself why on earth we allowed it all as meekly as we did. It was the first chance of such a thing we 'd had, and naturally, in a village like ours, where there had been Parvisses at The Pollards for three hundred years, there should have been a bit of a kick-up- the school-children throwing flowers and the farm hands to supper in the barn. People expect it.

Mind you, I was to blame. I ought to have taken matters in hand long before I did and begun preparations. I was the housekeeper and the eldest. Perhaps instinctively I always hoped it might be broken off. And then Aunt Lucy Bolt wanted Carrie up at Highgate to help her to settle into a house, and that dawdled away a month; and suddenly one evening, just as I was saying we must wake up and take a day at Monmouth choosing the trousseau, Carrie burst into an hysterical little laugh and then into tears, and told us she 'd been married in London at a Registry Office quite unbeknown even to Aunt Lucy Bolt.

He came in the next morning, very repentant and handsome, and brought the certificate with him, and was all apologies and blarney. He hated the notion, he said, of a lot of clacking women who thought of a sacrament only in terms of chiffon and satin. He said it was indecent. By the time he 'd done talking and showing his awfully good teeth, the others began to think he was right. But I'm obstinate, I suppose, for I stuck to my point.

"You might have had it in a church, anyway,' I said. 'No Parviss has ever been married hole and corner like that before.'

And then he looked at me beseechingly with his black eyes.

'You 're quite right, Judith,' he said; 'we ought. If you 'd only been there now

And that made them rather laugh at me. I could see they were all coming round to think weddings were a nuisance.

At last Dad decided that we wouldn't tell the villagers any particulars, but merely say they 'd been married quietly in London because they both disliked a fuss.

Well, at the end of the summer he took her to his flat in West Norwood, where he taught in some art school and painted pictures between whiles; and we did n't see her for three months.

And then she came down for Christmas and he came with her. She was very well dressed- much better than she 'd been at home. And just as devoted and unselfish as ever. But it always seemed to me, if she came up and kissed me on the hop, as she had a habit of doing, that her kisses were different - sort of desperate and clinging, like kisses on a scaffold.

Hector seemed absolutely wrapped up in her hardly letting her out of his sight, and she was very gentle with him.

And yet I knew her so well, you see, sharing rooms and all and I was as positive as I am that I 've hair on my head and nails at my finger ends that somewhere, or somehow, she 'd come up against Fear not the ordinary kind that comes over you in waves now and again, but something abominable, that never lets you rest. And she was always pulling away from it. When Amy suggested going back with them for a week, Carrie put her off. Laughing she was, but I know she did n't want any of us. She said that they were so cramped in their little flat at present, with Hector taking up the only big room for his studio, that Amy must wait till they could get the house at Hampstead they had promised themselves. But really, in her soul, she was hoping she 'd be dead before that house was taken - I knew it, and she knew that I did. It had always been difficult for us to deceive each other.

Except for these feelings and intuitions, you understand, there was really nothing to lay hold of. Maybe too I was a bit jumpy, for we'd had an unlucky summer with some cattlemaiming which we never traced, and Carrie's engagement had monopolized her so that we quarreled more among ourselves than usual; and that, of course, is worrying.

And then the night before Carrie and Hector went back to London I slipped out about eight to take a custard pudding to poor old Jesse Stagg in Barn Lane. I had to skirt the churchyard wall, and there was snow on the ground which muffled my footfalls down to nothing, though I believe I always step rather softly.

I was almost abreast of the lych gate on my way back when I heard a sound a low, sneering, throaty sound like the giggle of a lunatic who has just done something in

describably beastly. It came from beyond the yew tree which leans over old Squire Herriot's vault.

I can't tell you how loathsome it was! Sometimes, when I'm run down or too much alone, I hear it still. A sound can mean so much, can't it? I stopped as if someone had tugged at my skirts from behind, but it was n't repeated. I drew sharply back into the shadow of the big cypress, and waited - almost waited almost choking with the banging of my heart for something awful to happen.

Nothing did.

Only Hector Torrance came walking out of the gate, very upright and goodlooking in the glint of the moonlight.

When you come to think of it, why should n't he? He knew people in the village, and he might have been doing a hundred and one things.

I did n't try to catch him up or speak to him about it, but that night at supper I could not help looking at that upper lip of his; and I noticed for the first time that he had a trick of spreading out the fingers of his left hand very slowly and crumpling them in again, as if—but that's silly, of course.

When Carrie gave us all farewell hugs the next morning it was exactly as if she were saying, 'At your service, jailor,' on the steps of the guillotine or I imagined it was.

Well, they just paid flying visits like that till the end. Hector always seemed the perfect lover, but always I realized that Carrie was being besieged in the very soul of her, and was holding out holding out - always holding out, though I'm not at all sure that she knew it.