It was dark under our apricot trees, when we regained the courtyard of the inn, and while we waited for supper we watched with interest the scene around us, again struck by the contrast with our accustomed Arab surroundings. Where there are Arabs there are all the elements of a comic opera: the bright colour, the laughter, the ever-changing groups, the perpetual singing—not individual egotistic singing, but chorus, harmony, antiphon, with hand-clappings and merry shouts. There are sudden, and, apparently, inconsequent dances, and equally sudden and inconsequent changes of mood, drawing of knives, quarrels, embraces, and hand-shakings, such as exist nowhere but among Arabs, and on the lyric stage. Here, however, it was no comic opera, but a transpontine drama of the good old-fashioned sort—a novel by "Monk" Lewis, or Thomas Love Peacock. Men in long, dark drapery glided in and out by the imperfect light of the single lantern hung beneath the trees; they pulled their caps low on their foreheads, and veiled their faces with a cloak thrown over the left shoulder; all carried arms, and seldom spoke, and then only in low voices; the few Arabs present were of the upper class, officers mainly, and they seemed affected by the general depression, and drank coffee and smoked their water-pipes in silence. A single interruption served but to accentuate the prevailing mood. A drunken man, a very rare spectacle in a Moslem country—a Christian, of course—had reached the voluble and affectionate stage, and assured us all, in a variety of languages, of his perfect readiness to oblige us in any direction. The audience silently ignored his existence, and it was in vain that our host led him again and again to the gate: our polyglot friend invariably took affectionate leave, and promptly returned. We felt persuaded that the audience considered his conduct merely another form of the Christian eccentricity, of which our presence had already supplied a curious example. We were all crazy Franks—some drank wine, and others "wrote down stones." Relief came at last, in the person of the only woman we caught sight of in Ammân, a stout Italian of determined aspect, who withdrew her lord and master, not without a certain amount of discussion, which must have further enlightened our companions as to the manners and customs of the superior races. In spite of his irregularities the wretched creature was not friendless. He was a wandering contractor and builder, and possessed, we were told, of some fifteen helpmates dispersed over various parts of the country! Even our own mukaris were silent for once: Khalil slept over his water-pipe, and the boy was at his usual evening task of patching the cloths which hung beneath the horses to protect them from the flies, and which they generally kicked into rags in the course of the day. The beasts themselves seemed asleep after their meal—the only one, according to Arab custom, in the twenty-four hours. Dogs and chickens stirred now and then in dark corners, and cats crept about with a fitting air of silence and mystery.