he clapped his hands; and everybody agreed that the little horse could not have a better name.

"Now you must feed her, Rashid, so that she will know that she belongs to you," said Hamid. "I will get some of the date bread." He ran back quickly into the tent, and was back again in a moment with a brown, sticky mass in his hand, a kind of paste made of dried dates. This Rashid fed to Sultanah, who seemed to enjoy it very much.

"You must sometimes feed her meat, too; that will make her strong and swift," added Hamid, who was proud indeed to be able to show that he knew all about Arabian ponies.

"Our cousin who lives near the sea gives his horses dried fish to eat," said Rashid.

"That may be well enough for some horses," replied Hamid, "but I give Zuleika dates and milk and cakes. She eats what her master does. Do you not, my beauty?" he said, stroking Zuleika, who had just strolled up to make friends with the newcomer.

Nothing would do but that Rashid must have a ride at once; so Hamid saddled his pony, too, and away went the two boys cantering swift and sure in the morning sunlight.

"We will pass by the madressah, and let the boys see how fine we are," said Hamid.

The madressah was a low shed made of palm-branches where the little Bedouin boys and girls went to school; for even in the desert the children must study their lessons.

When Hamid and Rashid rode up, a number of children were sitting around on the ground, singing out their recitations at the top of their voices, while the school-mistress sat outside sewing.

But they forgot all about their lessons when they spied the new boy, and ran out to greet Rashid and ask him all sorts of questions; and they patted and praised Sultanah and picked out her good points in a very knowing way.

"Oh, thou truant!" said the school-mistress to Hamid, "why art thou not at thy lessons? Always thou hast thy head filled with other things than thy books."

"Nay, teacher, be not cross; to-morrow we will both come; and you will see that I shall bring you a new pupil," said Hamid, as he and Rashid rode away.

"Here is the place where the ponies are kept," said Hamid, riding up to one side of their tent. The boys jumped off their horses and began to unsaddle.

"We will fasten Sultanah, for she is strange yet to her new home," said Hamid, tying the pony's halter to one of the tent ropes. "But Zuleika would never wander from this spot where I place her until I bid her. She will never let any one touch her but me; and, if a stranger tried to mount her, he would soon find himself lying in the dust.

"Zuleika does everything but talk," Hamid went on, for he loved his horse as if she were one of the family. "Sometimes, when the nights are cold, she will come around to the tent curtain and put her head inside and neigh, and then I let her come inside and stand by the fire."

"Now we will make 'kayf' for awhile; for thou hast rushed about enough for one hot morning," said Hamid, throwing his saddle in one corner of the big tent.

Making "kayf" is just a little Arab boy's way of having a good time doing nothing at all but lying on a rug in a cool corner of a tent, or sitting in the shade of a palm-tree.

Rashid was not sorry to rest after the excitement of the morning, so he curled up on one of the mats and was fast asleep in a minute.

"Thou hast promised to show me the young camels," whispered Rashid when Hamid had finished pounding the coffee after the midday meal.

"Come now, then," said Hamid. "Nassar-Ben and his men guard the camel-colts down by the stream."

The two boys went in and out among the brown tents, jumping over the tent ropes rather than taking the trouble to go around, until they found the big herd of camels with a number of baby camels. They were in the river valley, where there was a good crop of coarse, high grass called camel-grass, because it is so coarse that nothing but a camel could eat it.

It was a great herd of camels, some of them eating of the grass and others lying down in the shade; and all around were frisking numbers of little baby camels.

Hamid's father was a Sheik, or captain of a tribe of Bedouins, the real desert tribes of Arabs, who live only in tents in an oasis of the desert.

They had pitched their tents in this particular spot because of its being a very suitable one in which to pasture their camels. The sole wealth of a Bedouin is his flocks and herds and his horse and his firearms; and, of course, his tent and his few simple belongings.

Some of the Sheiks raise horses, others sheep, and others camels. The people of Hamid's tribe lived by raising and selling camels to their neighbours who did not raise them, or to the merchants in the cities and towns.

"Don't baby camels look as if they would break in two?" said Rashid, as they came up to a group of young camels, "their legs are so long and thin."

"Father is going to take some of the colts to sell to the great Sheik who has the fine horses. Perhaps he will let us go with him," said Hamid. "I heard Nassar-Ben tell him last night that the young camels were now strong enough for the journey.

"Nassar-Ben is our camel-sheik; and he and his men guard the herd. There he sits in the shadow of the tent, and those are his children scrambling around and playing on that old camel's back," continued Hamid, bound that his little friend should know all about everything.

"Wait, oh, babies! I can mount quicker than that," shouted Hamid to Nassar-Ben's children, who were amusing themselves climbing over the back of one of the old camels.

"Look! This is the way to mount a camel," said Hamid, as he climbed up one of the legs of a big camel as if it were a tree-trunk; and, finally, throwing his leg over the beast's neck, he was soon perched on the hump in the middle of the camel's back.

"Come up, come up, that's the stairway!" he called to Rashid.

"Oh, I daren't," cried poor little Rashid, slipping back as he tried to hold on to the camel's rusty knee.

"You will learn in time, my little master," said Nassar-Ben, lifting him up beside Hamid. Then all the other little children swarmed up the old camel's legs; and, when the camel man gave her a blow with a stick, away she went, the children laughing and holding on to each other to keep from slipping off. Suddenly the old camel wheeled around and started back at a gallop. Little Rashid had ridden on a camel before, but never on a bare-back camel in that fashion. The first thing he knew he was lying in the dust, together with one of the little Bedouin boys, whom he had pulled off with him as he fell.

"Oh!" said the little boy, half-crying, "you made me fall off on purpose!" He felt so badly that he, one of the boys of the camel-sheik, should have been seen to fall from a camel that he began to thump Rashid as hard as he could.

"Fie! for shame!" cried Hamid, rushing up to them as he jumped down from the camel. "Is this the way to treat a stranger and a guest in our tents?"

The little boy stopped at once and hung his head, looking very much ashamed; for he knew how wrong it was to be rude to a guest.

"This greenhorn from the town made me fall, and they jeered at me," he said, sulkily.

"Nay, but I did not mean to pull you off," said Rashid; "thou must blame the steep hump of the camel." He looked so sorry that the little fellow stopped frowning at once. They made friends again, and all ran back for another ride on the camel, while Rashid made