as absurd from gentlemen and ladies in Europe; but an ‘extravagance’ in a kuftan has quite a different effect from one in a tail coat.  ‘What my butcher’s boy who brings the meat—­a cat?’ I gasped.  ’To be sure, and he knows well where to look for a bit of good cookery, you see.  All twins go out as cats at night if they go to sleep hungry; and their own bodies lie at home like dead meanwhile, but no one must touch them, or they would die.  When they grow up to ten or twelve they leave it off.  Why your boy Achmet does it.  Oh Achmet! do you go out as a cat at night?’ ‘No,’ said Achmet tranquilly, ’I am not a twin—­my sister’s sons do.’  I inquired if people were not afraid of such cats.  ’No, there is no fear, they only eat a little of the cookery, but if you beat them they will tell their parents next day, “So-and-so beat me in his house last night,” and show their bruises.  No, they are not Afreets, they are beni Adam (sons of Adam), only twins do it, and if you give them a sort of onion broth and camel’s milk the first thing when they are born, they don’t do it at all.’  Omar professed never to have heard of it, but I am sure he had, only he dreads being laughed at.  One of the American missionaries told me something like it as belonging to the Copts, but it is entirely Egyptian, and common to both religions.  I asked several Copts who assured me it was true, and told it just the same.  Is it a remnant of the doctrine of transmigration?  However the notion fully accounts for the horror the people feel at the idea of killing a cat.

A poor pilgrim from the black country was taken ill yesterday at a village six miles from here, he could speak only a few words of Arabic and begged to be carried to the Abab’deh.  So the Sheykh el-Beled put him on a donkey and sent him and his little boy, and laid him in Sheykh Hassan’s house.  He called for Hassan and begged him to take care of the child, and to send him to an uncle somewhere in Cairo.  Hassan said, ’Oh you will get well Inshallah, etc., and take the boy with you.’  ’I cannot take him into the grave with me,’ said the black pilgrim.  Well in the night he died and the boy went to Hassan’s mat and said, ’Oh Hassan, my father is dead.’  So the two Sheykhs and several men got up and went and sat with the boy till dawn, because he refused to lie down or to leave his father’s corpse.  At daybreak he said, ’Take me now and sell me, and buy new cloth to dress my father for the tomb.’  All the Abab’deh cried when they heard it, and Hassan went and bought the cloth, and some sweet stuff for the boy who remains with him.  Such is death on the road in Egypt.  I tell it as Hassan’s slave told it to me, and somehow we all cried again at the poor little boy rising from his dead father’s side to say, ‘Come now sell me to dress my father for the tomb.’  These strange black pilgrims always interest me.  Many take four years to Mecca and home, and have children born to them on the road, and learn a few words of Arabic.