One of the others said in tender tones:
'Blame him not, O my lord, for he is mad with sorrow. He is more luckless than the rest of us—may Allah help him! He killed the person he loved best on earth—his only brother.'
'Then it is true that you are murderers?' I asked, still half-incredulous.
'By Allah, it is true, alas! and we are paying for it by a year's enslavement.'
'A year! No more than that,' I cried, 'for killing men?'
'And is it not enough, O lord of kindness? It is not as if we had killed men from malice or desire of gain. We killed in sudden anger, or, in the case of three among us, in a faction-fight. It is from Allah; and we ask forgiveness.'
'How did that man kill?' I questioned, pointing to the apathetic figure of the fratricide, which attracted my imagination by its loneliness.
'He suffered persecutions from a rich man of his village, who was his rival for the favour of a certain girl—so it is said. Those persecutions maddened him at times. One day when he was mad like that, his brother came to him and spoke some word of blame upon another matter. He killed him, as he might have killed his wife and children or himself, being in that state of mind devoid of reason. When he awoke and saw what he had done, he wished to kill himself.'
'It is from Allah! His remorse is punishment,' exclaimed Rashîd. 'Why should he go to prison? He has had enough.'
'Nobody of this country would have thought of punishment for him,' replied the spokesman of the murderers, with rueful smile. 'But his brother was the servant of a foreign merchant—a Greek from overseas, I think it was—who put the business in his Consul's hands, and so——' The speaker clicked his thumbnail on his white front teeth to signify finality. 'But the poor man himself does not object; it seems indeed that he is glad to go with us. Perhaps by labour and harsh treatment he may be relieved.'