We had been silly, we agreed, to leave the hanging dog; and there, as we supposed, the matter ended.
But hardly had we finished breakfast when a knock came at the open door, and we beheld a tall and dignified fellah depositing his staff against the doorpost and shuffling off his slippers at the call to enter.
He said the murdered dog was his, and dear to him as his own eyes, his wife and children.

He was the finest dog in all the village, of so rare a breed that no one in the world had seen a dog just like him.

He had been of use to guard the house, and for all kinds of work.

The fellah declared his worth to be five Turkish pounds, which we must pay immediately unless we wished our crime to be reported to the Government.
With as nonchalant an air as I could muster, I offered him a beshlik--fourpence halfpenny.

He thereupon became abusive and withdrew--in the end, hurriedly, because Rashid approached him in a hostile manner.
He had not been gone ten minutes when another peasant came, asserting that the dog was really his, and he had been on the point of regaining his possession by arbitration of the neighbours when we shot the animal.