"They come from some Wiliyati (European) land," said the Arab; "no robber tells where he found his spoil, these slaves may have been taken from some wreck on the coast. Sixty gold tomauns are asked for the young man, and twenty for the girl."
"What can they do?" asked the Governor, after for a brief space turning over the subject in his mind, whilst leisurely sipping his coffee.
The courtier gave a list of accomplishments to which Harold certainly laid no claim. The white slave was a poet, a musician; the girl who accompanied him danced to his playing.
The Arab would not have dared to have declared all this had he not thought that, the bridal party being on the point of starting for a place distant hundreds of miles from Djauf, there was no danger of detection. The sinfulness of fraud and falsehood never troubled the conscience of the Arab, for he could not be said to possess one. He had been nurtured on lies, and felt rather pride than shame at success in cheating his employer.
After obtaining from the governor the eighty pieces of gold, the courtier hurried off to make his purchases from the Shararat Arabs. It brought the hot blood to Harold's pale cheek when, standing silently by, he heard the wrangling, the eager bargaining, the noisy asseverations, the blasphemous appeals to heaven, over the sale of an Englishman. It was humiliating to have his price beaten down, as if he had been some mere beast of burden.
"What are they saying? Why are they so angry? What are they quarrelling about?" asked Shelah. "And why are they looking so hard at me?" Harold could not give utterance to a reply to the questions asked by the poor little slave.
"After all," thought Harold, "I am not the first one of the Lord's people to have to endure the humiliation of having a price put upon me." Harold remembered Joseph; he remembered One far more exalted than Israel's son, for whose sacred person pieces of silver had been counted down. It is only in sin that there is shame.
The courtier was skilful in the art of bargaining, and, after at least half-an-hour given to noisy disputing, he paid down forty tomauns for Harold, Shelah being thrown in as a make-weight by Tewfik, who considered the baronet's child as a thing of no value at all.
The first result of a change of masters was a very welcome one to the slaves. Harold had been unable to change his garments since the day when he had fallen into Bedouin hands; and this, with the impossibility of bathing, had been to the English gentleman one of the most unsupportable of his trials. But, having become a gift from the Governor of Djauf to his high-born son-in-law, the slave must appear in befitting guise, with not a grain of dust upon him. Hartley had at once the luxury of a bath, and then was clothed from head to foot in spotless white, a muslin turban was wound around his head, and around his waist was twisted a kamarband of crimson and gold.
Given over to the charge of some Arab women, Shelah also underwent a transformation. Greatly enchanted with her finery, Shelah met Harold about an hour afterwards. The Lammikin was attired in yellow gauze, spangled with silver, her red locks hidden under a large veil of the same gaudy material.