"Hassan! what mean you? Whose work is this? Are you mad?"
Hassan sprang frantically forward—
"Mad, did you say?" he yelled; "mad! aye, mad! mad! mad!" and he dashed himself on the earth and howled hideously in a paroxysm of fury. Ali perceived at once that his reason had given way, and supposed that he had destroyed his sister in the blindness of his rage. Leaving him to exhaust himself where he lay, Ali removed the body to the adjoining room, and having washed away the stains from the floor, he sat down to consider the best course to adopt to prevent harm to Hassan or himself on account of the crime of the former. He was fearful of exciting Hassan by asking an explanation; but from this he was saved by Hassan himself, who now rose slowly from the ground, and looked with a long searching glance round the room. His appearance was frightful; his turban had fallen off, exposing his shaven head; his pallid face, stained with blood, contrasted with his black moustaches and glittering eyes; the veins in his neck and temples were swollen to bursting,—his whole face distorted. The stout heart of the Arab could not divest him of a superstitious misgiving, as he looked on the figure of his friend; he, lately so calm, now the prey of insanity.
Hassan pressed his hands to his eyes, to try and realise the past, and then stood wreathing and winding his fingers together.
"Horrid dream! what art thou?" he said, in a hollow voice, and turning to Ali, "O Moslem, let me remember; yes, she is safe. O Azora, thou art safe! Methought I returned home—home? My destiny was darkened—clouds and darkness were over me. Methought my little darling flew into my arms—I kissed her. Ha! again! is it blood? No! no! I dream still! I laid her in her bed—she sleeps—no noise—she sleeps! I laid my burning brow on the table; I thought it would have burnt into it. When I lifted my eyes, Iblis stood before me. My dagger was in my hand. 'Strike!' he said." Here Hassan twisted his hands more eagerly, and his whole frame was trembling. "The keen blade glittered like a lambent moonbeam; I sprang to my feet. Satan avaunt! I cast it from me. Ha! what do I hear? the demoniac laugh of the retreating fiend, and the agonized cry of my murdered child. There she is, see, at my feet—bleeding—dead!"
Large drops followed one another down the brow and face of Hassan, but he was deadly calm, and seemed to repeat the words from memory, but to have no feeling of their meaning.
Ali, finding he did not relapse, took advantage of the pause to soothe his spirits and divert his thoughts—it was needless. His memory just recollected the bare outline of the scene, but without consciousness, and he did not even ask for his sister.
"God has smitten the oppressors of the innocent," muttered Ali, while Hassan fell into an apathetic stupor; reaction of the violent emotions which had so shaken him. Ali had now to consider what was best to be done; Hassan could no further co-operate with him, and for him to present himself to the authorities under any circumstances would ensure his destruction. Ali wrote on a piece of paper, "Hassan Ibn Ibrahim, possessed with an evil spirit, slew his sister," and after removing Hassan's dagger, and everything he might make use of to injure himself, he took the child's body, and, during the night, left it with the billet at the gate of the Cadi, knowing that, when discovered in the morning, inquiry would be made, the truth be apparent, and the affair hushed up.