"Art mad? How should I know of any treasure?"
"Swear by the Blessed Sacrament! Nought else will serve; and if hereafter it should prove that thou art perjured, I will beat thy filthy soul from out thy body."
"By the Blessed Sacrament I swear!" replied Iskender.
"That is well!" Yuhanna curled his long moustachios. "Then why does Elias refuse every other engagement? It is not likely thy Emîr will pay him much."
"By the same pledge I know not! Ask the man himself!"
"Thou seest, 'Hanna, as I told thee, it is all a lie," laughed a bystander, the same who had before spoken.
Iskender escaped from them, bearing the conscience of a perjured wretch. He called Allah Most High to witness how the sin was forced on him. It was some comfort to reflect that he was still technically a Protestant, so might be taken to have sworn by the sacrament of that sect which he knew to be without Divine significance. But all the same his crime was very heinous.
Early in the morning following this grave event, Iskender was engaged in sweeping out the entrance-hall, when his uncle strode in out of the sunlight, of which he seemed an offshoot in his splendour of apparel. More respectable than ever through pride in the command of a company of high-born English bent on sight-seeing, he addressed his nephew from the height of condescension:
"O son of my brother, I start this day upon a journey of ten days with my party, and would say a word to thee before I go. Elias tells me that both thou and he propose to ride forth with the young khawâjah, and show him something of the land. That is well. Elias, though sometimes foolish, has experience; and I have told him to instruct thee fully in our business. Go not too far, for travel in wild places is too arduous for one so young; and Elias has little acquaintance with the desert ways, and that little disastrous, he and all his party having been captured and held to ransom by the Bedû, because he forgot to pay the tribes their proper dues. Be cautious and observant. In sh' Allah we shall all return in safety."
"In sh' Allah!" echoed Iskender in great astonishment; for it had that minute occurred to him that he had no real knowledge of the whereabouts of the place to which he had undertaken to conduct his patron, beyond what Elias had implied, that it was somewhere in the neighbourhood of Wady Mûsa. His first sentiment on the discovery was one of thankfulness, because he had not sworn falsely in his oath to Yuhanna.