“Bedouin woman,” he said to her, in a hurried and agitated voice, “are you a mother?”
“I am,” she replied. “At least, I have been.”
“El-hamdu-lillah, praise be to God,” said the horseman. Dismounting, he drew from under his cloak a parcel wrapped in a shawl and placed it gently beside her at the base of the pyramid, then vaulting on his horse, dashed his spurs into its flank, and disappeared with the same reckless speed that had marked his approach.
The astonished Khadijah was still following with her eye his retreating figure when a faint cry caught her ear. What mother’s ear was ever deaf to that sound? Hastily withdrawing the shawl, she found beneath it an infant whose features and dress indicated a parentage of the higher class. Around his neck was an amulet of a strange and antique fashion; round his body was a sash, in the folds of which was secured a purse containing forty Venetian sequins, and attached to the purse was a strip of parchment, on which was written the following sentence from the traditions of the Prophet, “Blessed be he that gives protection to the foundling.”
Hassan, who had been listening with “bated breath” to Khadijah’s narrative, and who had discovered as easily as the reader that he was himself the “Child of the Pyramid,” suddenly asked her—
“Was that horseman my father?”
“I know not,” she replied, “for we have never seen or heard of him since that day. Nevertheless, I think it must have been your father, for I could see that, just before springing on his horse to depart, he turned and gave such a look on the shawl-wrapper that——”
“What kind of look was it?” said Hassan hastily, interrupting her.
“I cannot describe it,” said Khadijah. “It might be love, it might be sorrow; but my heart told me it was the look of a father.”
“What was the horseman like?” said Hassan.