“It is a blood feud; let them alone, O my children,” said the officer in command of the detachment, a man advanced in years. “Drive the one party back toward the church, the other on toward the tower, that they be fairly sundered.... When thou, O old wolf, next requirest the price of blood, see thou choose some spot more seemly than the heart of the city. Is there not land enough open in all the world that thou must needs choose this place?”
“Art hurt, my son?” asked Hassan of Shibli, as they were driven toward the tower.
“Aye, and that sorely,” replied the young man, nursing his two hands. “I had slain him who smote me, but that he escaped in the crowd.”
“I smote thee, O valorous youth,” laughed one at his side. “Thou didst clasp me so tight from behind that I was hampered, so I pricked thy two hands.”
At that there was loud laughter, and Shibli hung his head.
“That soldier spoke sense,” observed Hassan later, when, freed from surveillance, they were returning to the khan. “Outside the walls is best for battle as for everything else. Thy horse is preserved to thee, O Thief. To-morrow, or the day after, we retire from the city. It is good at least to know that those Bedû are not favored above us. They have not procured rifles, or would they still be here among the jumpers of walls? By Allah’s leave, we may chance on their camping ground and make an end. At least, if Allah will, we can glean a little, out of sight of the garrison.”
“We shall have all the wealth of the land, I swear it, so only that I keep my horse,” cried the Thief in rapture.
It was with enthusiasm that all to whom Hassan spoke on the morrow heard of his decision to quit the city. His open abuse of a government which could refuse a few rifles to men worn out in its service, had alarmed the timorous and supple townsmen. He had inveighed against Abd-ur-Rahman Bey, a young man of the first influence, in terms almost treasonable, calling him selfish and impious, a dog who pushed back the gift of an old friend, and was above speaking to his own father. Sober men frown on such talk, and a certain rich merchant, overhearing some of it, had observed:
“These men are possessed with blind devils. Is it to be supposed that Abd-ur-Rahman will show them kindness when they defame him in the markets? And can he now let them take the rifles? I will give you my neighbor’s hoard privately, as between ourselves; but blab the matter beforehand, and I avert my face, I draw my robe away, I have no knowledge of you. As for what the old braggart says about Abd-ur-Rahman’s father, it is a lie. Abd-ur-Rahman is an orphan, both of father and mother. I have the assurance of it from his own mouth.”
That merchant, with the other tavern haunters, was aware how often men who hear sedition and rebuke not its prophet, are themselves made guilty of it in the eve of Power. And Hassan, in the midst of his adherents, looked ill to rebuke. The coffee sellers, therefore, joined with their customers in extolling the wisdom of his plan to depart. They praised his intelligence, and that of his honorable companions. The city was no place for them. It was a malicious place, a backbiting and slanderous place, the home of all injustice. No wonder their Excellencies preferred the open land; and so on.