'What is your opinion?' I inquired of Suleymân.
'The land is good, and capable of much improvement,' he replied, 'and all the trees go with it, which is an advantage. Also the source of water will be all our own.'
Suleymân repeated this remark in presence of the crowd of villagers whom we found awaiting our return before my house. At once there rose a cry: 'That Yûsuf is a liar. Some of the trees do not belong to him. The water, too, does not originate upon his property, but on the hill above, so can be cut from him.'
Suleymân was talking with the village headman. When he returned to me his face was grave.
'What is it?' I inquired. 'Has the Sheykh Yûsuf been deceiving us?'
He shook his head with a disgusted frown before replying:
'No, it is these others who are lying through dislike of him. Is your heart set upon the purchase of that land?'
'By no means.'
'That is good; because this village is a nest of hornets. The headman has long marked that land out for his own. Were we to pay Sheykh Yûsuf a good price for it, enabling him to leave the neighbourhood with honour, they would hate us and work for our discomfort in a multitude of little ways. We will call upon the Sheykh to-morrow and cry off the bargain, because your Honour caught a touch of fever from the land to-day. That is a fair excuse.'
We proffered it upon the morrow, when the Sheykh Yûsuf received it with a scarce veiled sneer, seeming extremely mortified. Directly after we had left him, we heard later, he went down to the tavern by the village spring and cursed the elders who had turned my mind against him in unmeasured terms; annoying people so that they determined there and then to make an end of him.