The rout of the besiegers was complete. The greater part threw down their arms and cried for quarter or sought safety in the alleys and lanes adjacent. The unknown did not draw rein until he was face to face with the Soothsayer, against whose neck he levelled the point of his lance.
“By what right, thou scoundrel,” he thundered, “dost thou levy war on the just and mighty Pasha of Ubikwi? Answer, knave, ere my steel find an answer in thy throat!”
Thus forced into a corner, the insolent Soothsayer, trusting to his sacred office, made answer: “By the right of my divine duty. I am a Soothsayer, and know that the Pasha of Ubikwi hath deceived his subjects and offended against high Heaven by palming off as his son the female child born to his house eighteen years agone.”
“And, by the divine right of my birth,” responded the knight, “I know thee to be a liar and a knave. Look at me. I AM PRINCE MULEY, born unto the house of my father eighteen years ago, and neither a female child nor a male impostor, like thee. Die, dog, with the lie in thy throat!”
With that he set spurs to his horse, and the point of his lance came out through the back of the Soothsayer’s neck. Whereat all the people cried out, as with one voice, “Long live Prince Muley, the son of his noble father, Muley Mustapha!”
But Muley Mustapha merely gasped in wonder, as not comprehending the simple way in which the truth had been witnessed and error confuted,—as, indeed, a wiser man might have wondered, had he not been told the explanation given in the next and concluding chapter.
CHAPTER XIV.
This Book is a Mirror wherein the Wise Man seeth Wisdom but the Fool seeth Folly.—Shacabac.
“I don’t think that I quite understand,” began Muley Mustapha, when he found himself alone with his gifted spouse for a few moments before dinner, and while the other dignitaries were pleasantly engaged in restoring tranquillity to the realm by superintending the decapitation of the disaffected.