Hassan smiled.
"Go on sleeping, and continue thy dream," said he.
The sun was high in the heaven when Hassan Pasha quitted the kiosk. Yffim Beg was awaiting him.
"Wilt thou not ride to Pesth there to mark out the place for the camp of Feriz Beg, who has just arrived?"
Azrael shrewdly guessed that Yffim Beg was for leading the Governor to the Pesth shore to satisfy him as to the peasant girls whom he was said to have mistaken for soldiers by some evil enchantment. She also thought how convenient it would be for her that they should take Majmun with them for the whole day.
Hassan accordingly accepted Yffim's invitation, and galloped with him and Majmun over to the opposite shore, where Yffim was amazed to discover that not a soul of Feriz Beg's host was visible.
In the night the suddenly released water had covered the whole ground of their camp, and they had been obliged to retire farther away from the river and seek another encampment beyond Pesth.
Yffim Beg would have liked to have torn out his beard in his wrath if he had not been restrained by the general's presence.
But Majmun, under the pretext of clearing the way, reconnoitred the scene of yesterday's interview, and there, in the roots of the silver birch, he found that a wreath had been deposited. He concealed it beneath his burnush, and carried it home to Azrael.
The wreath was composed of two pieces—a branch of laurel and a spray of thorn.