"We shall see," said the Emîr, urging his horse forward. At the entrance to the wady he dismounted, and Iskender, who was then some way behind, could hear derisive laughter. It was no valley at all. The shadow of a big projecting rock had been mistaken in the distance for an opening. The Frank was sitting calmly in that shadow when his friend came up.
"I can see no gold here," he observed politely; "but you have better eyes. Look well about you!"
Three parts unconscious, the unhappy youth obeyed. Alighting off his horse, he scanned the heights above, the ground at his feet, the sandy plain on which their mules were seen at a great distance.
"No gold! no gold!" he murmured idiotically.
"Give up this acting!" cried the Frank with vehemence. "Confess it was all a lie! Say why you brought me here. We are man to man just now, and may as well arrange our business before your friend the muleteer comes up. That missionary told me to look out for villainy."
Iskender bit the dust and wept aloud, calling on Allah to attest his innocence. To be accused of acting, when his heart was broken; to be suspected of a purpose hostile to his patron, when he would have shed his blood to bring a smile to that beloved face!
"Confess!" the Emîr repeated; and, hearing the voice of the Father of Ice, Iskender lied, as he had always lied, through fear, to that stern, upright man.
"No, it is true, sir, but we went wrong somehow. My God, it is true, sir; Elias said so too!"
"Elias is a liar.… Confess now that you never knew the way, and that your father never in his life saw any valley such as that you've so often described to me."
But Iskender would not admit that he had lied at all; to do so would have been to justify his patron's cruel scorn. Indeed, the fiction of the gold had grown so natural that he believed, even now, that it was partly true.