"Allah's will be done! We shall see when the time is at hand. Now, at least, you will eat my salt and abide with me this night."
"Be it as you desire. Yet, first, I would see to my men."
"Go; but return quickly. My eyes yearn to feast upon the son of my daughter."
Reluctantly the sheik's arms released their clasp, and Olvir darted away along the river-bank. Al Arabi, with a curt command to his swarthy followers to withdraw, stood gazing after his grandson until he vanished behind a group of booths.
"Allah be praised this day!" he murmured fervently as he returned to his cushioned seat. "Kasim, my son-in-law, is a thorn in the flesh; but this bright child of Gulnare renews my youth. His eye is as the soaring falcon's; his step as the fleet gazelle's."
Nor was the sheik's praise unmerited. No runner in the Frankish camp could have covered the mile downstream and back with near the swiftness of the young Northman; yet when he stood again at the door of the pavilion and stepped in upon the costly Persian rugs, he betrayed no other signs of the race than a slight flush in his dark cheeks and an added depth of breathing.
"By the Beard!" exclaimed Al Arabi; "as Zora among coursers, so is the son of Gulnare among runners."
"I have run down the grey wolf in fair chase," replied Olvir, simply, and at the beckoning gesture of the sheik, he seated himself beside the old man in the same Oriental posture. Al Arabi smiled and clapped his hands. Almost immediately an Arab attendant, in loose shirt and baggy trousers, appeared at the entrance and salaamed to the ground.
"Bring food," said Al Arabi.
The man salaamed again and sprang away. As he disappeared, Olvir turned gravely to the sheik.