'Yes, Aga, and one who could handle this with the best man among you,' he replied, snatching up a musket and fixing and unfixing the bayonet with an adroitness that none but a practised soldier can achieve. This old man was spare and brawny, quick of speech and sharp in eye. 'Yes—I was a soldier of Scherif Bey's regiment, and fought at the battles of Ilonis, of Athens, and of Koniah.'
'Yes, by the beard of the Prophet,' exclaimed the Yuze Bashi, waking up suddenly; 'and you it was, O most worthy Moustapha! who assisted me to save the colours of the Scherif, by stuffing them into my regimental breeches. Mashallah! 'twas well, it was not the standard of Islam, for where were the mortal breeches which would have held that?'
'True, O gallant Yuze Bashi; and the same battle of Koniah which made thy fortune on earth, while it marred mine here, made it, I trust, in Paradise.'
'You were left on the field?' said Hussein.
'Pierced by a ball.'
'May dogs defile the grave of him who shot it!'
'Nay, nay, Hadjee Hussein, that bullet brought light and repentance to me; for until that day so fatal to the fortune of our lord the Sultan in Egypt, I was a very wretch—an apostate—a scoffer—an unbeliever in the prophet—yea, a veritable Janissary!'
'But a brave soldier, Hafiz Moustapha.'
'My lord is pleased to be merry.'
'By the night and all that it enfolds in its shades, I am not, Moustapha! I speak but the truth of you, Hafiz. You were ever a brave soldier as any in the ranks of Islam—as any in the army of Mahmoud II., though somewhat of a visionary.'