“So, so,” he replied; “my falcon struck three pheasants, and I killed a dog.”
Baïla dared not interrogate him as to the doubtful sense which this word might have in the mouth of so orthodox a Mussulman as Ali-ben-Ali.
That evening, when Mariam came to her mistress, after hesitating as to the information she was about to give her, and after ten preparatory exclamations, she informed her of the event of the day.
As the pacha was returning to his palace, and his hunting train was straggling along by the woods of Kizil-Ermak, near the place where they entered the second enclosure, Haïder, whom a slave held by a leash, stopped obstinately before a copse, growling in low tones, which attracted the attention of Djezzar. The copse having been beaten by the train, a man sprung out from it, flying rapidly toward the river, across which he endeavored to swim, but before he could reach the opposite bank, the pacha, snatching a gun from the hand of one of his delhis, had drawn on the flyer with such certainty of eye and hand, that, struck in the head, he had disappeared immediately, carried down by the current. This man was a Christian, but an Asiatic Christian, as his head-dress of blue muslin proved. Besides, the pacha said that the roar of Haïder of itself showed what his religion was.
“Be his country or religion what they may,” said Mariam, finishing her story, “he is dead, dead without any one being enabled to divine what motive could have induced him to secrete himself on this side of the river by the very verge of the palace.”
“At the verge of the gardens,” then interrupted Baïla, who had listened to the recital of her old negress without interrupting her for a moment, or even without appearing to be greatly moved by it. “It was into the gardens that he wished to penetrate, as he had done before.”
Mariam looked at her with surprise.
“Yes,” pursued the Mingrelian, “the man whom they have killed is the young Frank, who had doubtless changed his dress, so as not to attract too much attention to himself by his European costume.”
Mariam remained silent.
“Do you not think so also?”