At length he stopped to inquire of a group of good Muslims standing gossiping before a cobbler’s stall, whether anyone had seen the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn and his unmistakable adherents. The men turned from their questioner to glance meaningly one at another. The cobbler it was who answered.
“W’ Allah!” he exclaimed, pausing, needle in air, from his sewing at a certain slipper. “Go and ask at the Mehkemeh. A hundred Muslimûn are shut in there, and they say the English consul is judging them in place of our rightful Câdi. Ah, those Franks are devils. There is no end to their enormities. And our lords, who suffer them, are little better.”
Zeyd stayed to hear no more. He ran on, panting, with misty eyes. Upon the fastened door of the courthouse a crowd pressed, enjoying a grievous outcry from within.
“Ha, they beat the malefactors. That is good,” said a Nazarene to his neighbor. “He knows his business, this English consul.”
Zeyd thundered in vain at the door. None opened, and the crowd jeered at him. With heart near to breaking, he gave up the attempt and ran headlong toward the Haràm. A great pulse throbbed in his brain, seeming the pulse of the whole world, for every object of his gaze beat with it.
The aged Mahmûd Ali, Chief of the Learned in the Holy City, was coming out of the Mosque El Aksa on the arm of a young disciple—his senile blindness doubled for the moment by the sudden sunlight dropped on him like a dazzling veil—when Zeyd, the son of Abbâs, fell groveling at his feet.
“Who is it, O my son?” quavered the sheykh, much alarmed; for he could not discern the form of the suppliant whether of man or beast.
“It is some mad derwìsh,” replied the lad supporting him.
“Nay, it is I, Zeyd, the servant of the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn. Mad am I now, and with reason, for they kill my master.”