“Is it the White Knight?” eagerly asked Ali Atar, who, though prostrated by severe illness, still directed from his sick-bed the movements of his wild followers.
“Not so, O my father; it is but one of his knights, with a letter that he is bidden to give into thine own hand. Thou knowest that when I bore thy message to the White Knight, I found him laid on his couch, and bowed down by sickness; and all his men were sorely out of heart.”
The grim old sheikh muttered a curse under his breath; but, furious as he was at finding his plans thus foiled, the commandant of Tormas was far too good a general to lose a chance of seeing into those of his enemies.
“Admit the Christian dog; perchance we may learn somewhat from him.”
In came a tall knight in black armour, with a dark plume in his helmet, the open visor of which showed the swarthy face and black hair of a Spaniard. He handed a sealed letter to Ali Atar, who, as he took it, little guessed that he had got his wish after all, and that this seeming Spaniard was the White Knight himself.
“Peace be with thee,” said Alured, purposely making his Arabic so bad that a lurking grin flitted over the grave faces of the attendants.
“With thee be peace,” replied the sheikh, as he opened the letter, and found the knight recommended to him as having full powers to negotiate the exchange of prisoners. Having read it, he addressed the envoy in Arabic; but the latter shook his head, and replied in Spanish.
But Ali Atar, a Moor of the old school, hated the “dogs of Spain” too utterly to have learned their tongue, and shook his head in turn.
“We shall need an interpreter,” said he, “in conferring with this infidel who knows not our speech. Call hither quickly the unbeliever El Katoom!”
At the sound of his brother’s Moorish name, Alured (though he had foreseen this order, and done his best to bring it about) felt his strong nerves tingle; and as the crimson curtain of the doorway fell back, the brave man’s heart bounded as if it would burst from its place; for there before him stood—thinner and darker than of old, in Moorish dress, but still plainly recognizable—his lost brother Hugo.