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Anstice never forgot that first day's ride over the desert sand They had started early, very shortly, indeed, after daybreak, and by the time the sun was fully risen they were already so, the dry and glittering air full of that peculiar, crisp sparkle which ne The sand shone and twinkled in the yellow sunshine with an al effect, and the pale blue sky had not yet taken on the pitiless ultramarine hue which comes with the brazen noon

The horses, too, see quality of the air They curvetted and danced over the sand, tossing their arched necks and lifting their feet daintily as though they were conscious of the beauty and fitness of their ownon alike this!" Anstice threw back his head and inhaled large draughts of the intoxicating, sun-warlorious tracts of desert land where one ht pitch one's tent! I declare I wish I were a nomad myself!"

"You feel like that?" Sir Richard looked a trifle wistfully at the youngerhim his superior youth and more robust physique "For my part I confess to a distrust of the desert It seee tracts of sand, as though the Creator had regretted their creation, yet was too perfect a Worker to try, by altering the original purpose of His handiwork, to turn the for which they were not intended"

He paused, pulling up his horse and turning in his saddle to survey the yellow and broaste over which they had colish to the soil, I find lish landscape," he said, with a s two blades of grass spring where there was but one before may not be a very exalted one, but I confess I see ust sun, than in these acres of yellow sand, and the thought of a perpetual surey tones of an autu--well, it doesn't appeal to hed, ashalad to be ain after even so brief a halt