"Brothers," said Asabri, "has business been good? I ask for a reason."
"The reason, sir?"
"Why," said he, "I thought, if I should not be considered grasping, to ask you for a mouthful of soup."
Confusion seized the brigands. They protested that they were ungrateful dogs to keep the noble guest upon the tenterhooks of hunger. They called upon God to smite them down for inhospitable ne'er-do-weels. They plied him with soup, with black bread; they roasted strips of goat's flesh for him; and from the hollow of the tomb they fetched bottles of red wine in straw jackets.
Presently Asabri sighed, and offered them cigarettes from a gold case.
"For what I have received," said he, "may a courteous and thoughtful God make me truly thankful.... I wish that I could offer you, in return for your hospitality, something more substantial than cigarettes. The case? If it were any case but that one! A present from my wife."
He drew from its pocket a gold repeater upon which his initials were traced in brilliants.
"Midnight. Listen!"
He pressed a spring, and the exquisite chimes of the watch spoke in the stillness like the bells of a fairy church.
"And this," he said, "was a present from my mother, who is dead."