They needed no badge but the badge of poverty, and no voice of pleading but the voice of misery.

Most of them brought nothing with them in their hands, and some brought little on their backs save the stripes of their tormentors.

A few had flocks and herds, which they drove before them.

A few had tents, which they shared with their fellows; and a few had guns, with which they shot the wild boar for their food and the hyena for their safety.

Thus, possessing little and desiring nothing, having neither houses nor lands, and only considering themselves secure from their rulers in having no money, this company of battered human wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded, passed with their leader from place to place of the waste country about Mequinez.