‘If they would let us alone, I am content to leave them,’ said Hamood.
‘Hem!’ said the Emir Fakredeen. ‘Do you see that gazelle, noble Sheikh? How she bounds along! What if we follow her, and the pursuit should lead us into the lands of the Ansarey?’
‘It would be a long ride,’ said Sheikh Hamood. ‘Nor should I care much to trust my head in a country governed by a woman.’
‘A woman!’ exclaimed Tancred and Fakredeen.
‘They say as much,’ said Sheikh Hamood; ‘perhaps it is only a coffee-house tale.’
‘I never heard it before,’ said Fakredeen. ‘In the time of my uncle, Elderidis was Sheikh. I have heard indeed that the Ansarey worship a woman.’
‘Then they would be Christians,’ said Sheikh Hamood, ‘and I never heard that.’
CHAPTER XLVI.
The Laurellas