“As for thee,” he cried, “thou shalt lodge nowhere but in my house. I swear it.”
“Yes, go with him, O my brother,” said Milhem, as one well pleased. “It seems thou art a tamer of wild beasts. Go with him and Allah with thee.”
So it happened that Shems-ud-dìn and his servant supped and slept that night in the house of a wild brigand, whose talk reeked of gore. And when he awoke in the morning, there was Hassan watching him from the arched doorway, where he stood polishing a long-barreled gun with a piece of goatskin. They smiled the one to the other.
“Watching thee asleep, I have found out why thou didst overcome me yesterday—me, the pupil of the mighty Shamil; thou, a peaceful doctor of religion. It is because thou art a saint!” said Hassan Agha.
“Allah witness I am the least saintlike of men,” said Shems-ud-dìn, yawning to fuller consciousness. But Hassan would have it that he was a saint.
“I go presently to see thy brother,” he added after awhile. “We need horses if we are to fight the Bedû. He is a devil, that brother of thine. I expect he will help us with some stratagem.... By Allah, it is a thankless task, protecting these tillers of the rock. They have been wont to pay to the chiefs of the desert a tribute, by virtue of which they were unmolested. Now they scowl on us because we forbid all tribute save to the officers of our lord the Padishah—that is, ourselves. As yet we have not seen one Bedawi. The whole nation, they say, is far away in the east at this season. They come not here before the first rain. But these fellahìn are great liars. They told us there was a forest close at hand, but when we looked, behold! a few old terebinths scattered over as many hills. They told me there were tigers, but after hunting the region near and far, I brought back but one lean partridge, some conies, some pigeons, and an owl or so. There are no tigers. Perhaps there are no Bedû either.”
Hassan spoke in a jargon approaching Turkish interspersed with words of Arabic. Shems-ud-dìn understood what was said, though he would have been puzzled to separate the words. The friendliness of the speaker was, at all events, past question. He clapped his hands and a girl appeared from some inner chamber, bearing a tray, whereon was bread and curds and fruit, which the negro took from her and set before his master.
“It is my woman,” said Hassan casually. “Thou hast not brought one with thee? A pity! Thou wilt sigh in vain. Now there is the daughter of my uncle—he who commands the colonists at Ain Tûbeh, six hours from here—a fine girl, plump and tractable. My uncle would resign her to thee at a fair price—that is, if he have not already struck a bargain with the dealer. It is a custom from of old with us to sell the pretty ones. So they become the mothers of great men, perchance even of the Sultàn’s majesty.”
“I have not given thought to woman these many days,” said Shems-ud-dìn, with the look of sad remembrance. “My fair one, my Leylah, died in childbed awhile since, my desire with her. A long story, O my friend! It began at Edreyneh, whither I had gone, by invitation of my friend, the learned Mustafa, to preach throughout Ramadan in the mosque of Sultàn Selìm——”
“By thy leave,” broke in Hassan, “the morning calls us. At noon or in the evening we can tell our stories. Come forth now, and let me show thee this place of dogs.”