Suddenly on the awe-stricken silence an answering voice rang, clear, scornful, bold, and with the eager and fearless defiance of youth:
"If I had been that king, I would not have cared for woman, or bird, or rose. I would have lived long enough to enrich my nation, and mass my armies, and die a conqueror. What would the rest have mattered? You are mad, O Preacher! to rail against gold. You flout a god that you know not, and that never has smiled upon you."
The speaker stood outside the crowd with a dead sea-bird in his hand; he was in his early boyhood, he had long locks of bright hair that curled loosely on his shoulders, and eyes of northern blue, that flashed like steel in their scorn.
The people, indignant and terrified at the cold rough words which blasphemed their prophet, turned with one accord to draw off the rash doubter from that sacred audience-place, but the Preacher stayed their hands with a gesture, and looked sadly at the boy.
"Is it thee, Arslàn? Dost thou praise gold?—I thought thou hadst greater gods."
The boy hung his head and his face flushed.
"Gold must be power always," he muttered. "And without power what is life?"
And he went on his way out from the people, with the dead bird, which he had slain with a stone that he might study the exquisite mysteries of its silvery hues.
The Preacher followed him dreamily with his glance.
"Yet he will not give his life for gold," he murmured. "For there is that in him greater than gold, which will not let him sell it, if he would."