Perhaps there's a revolution, perhaps there's been a massacre of Europeans, perhaps Turkey is kicking up a dust, perhaps Europe is interfering--all of it, all at once.
Later still .-- I've found out it's a little of all, and the Saadat is ready to go.

I guess he can go now pretty soon, for the worst of the fever is over.

But something has happened that's upset him-- knocked him stony for a minute.

Halim Bey was killed last night--by order of the sheikhs, I'm told; but the sheikhs won't give it away.
When the Saadat went to them, his eyes blazing, his face pale as a sheet, and as good as swore at them, and treated them as though he'd string them up the next minute, they only put their hands on their heads, and said they were "the fallen leaves for his foot to scatter," the "snow on the hill for his breath to melt"; but they wouldn't give him any satisfaction.

So he came back and shut himself up in his tent, and he sits there like a ghost all shrivelled up for want of sleep, and his eyes like a lime-kiln burning; for now he knows this at least, that Halim Bey had brought some word from Kaid's Palace that set these Arabs against him, and nearly stopped my correspondence.