This phrase she repeated to herself again and again. She seemed unable to get away from it.
"Ali has died, and not by my hand."
Kleon was strikingly like his sister; indeed, his young face scarcely differed at all from hers, but in his eyes quite another sort of flame sparkled. Her face, full of dark thoughts, was much more terrible; his was free and open, and full of radiant hope.
"My triumph has lost its worth if Ali is dead," she said, with a sigh. "The old fox has dodged my steel by taking refuge in hell. Oh, would that I might follow him thither also, that I might tear his gray beard, which he has bathed in my kinsman's blood!"
"Behold! here is my gray beard!" cried a voice at that instant from the other end of the room, and the brother and sister beheld Ali Tepelenti standing before them.
The terror-stricken young people involuntarily crossed themselves. Horror nailed them to the ground and petrified all their limbs, when they saw what they imagined to be a spectre standing there before them in the self-same gray robe in which he had been buried two days before.
"Behold, here I am, Ali Tepelenti!"
With that the spectre clapped his hands, and from every corner of the room rushed forth Albanians armed to the teeth, and before the brother and sister could approach their weapons, they were overpowered and tied together.
It was really Ali Tepelenti who stood before them.
They had put him away underground, it is true, but underground there were paths and passages only too well known to him. The whole spectacle of the interment had been arranged by himself, and there was an exit from the bottom of his tomb into subterranean corridors. When the general joy and satisfaction at the victory was at its height, he was abroad and at work.