"You will swear, then?" demanded the other, promptly.
"Yes," and Khalid folded his hands piously while he muttered the formula; then added, "Now give me the money."
"Softly, brother," was the reply. "Remember well the other words of the Apostle, 'violate not your oaths, since you have made Allah a witness over you,' The money in due time; now lead me and do as I shall bid, or in turn I swear you shall not finger one bit of copper."
Now it befell that on the afternoon of the day when Khalid the blind muezzin sold his conscience for a hundred dirhems, Hakem and his fellow-eunuch Wasik sat by the outer gate of the great court of El Halebah with a mankalah board between them, busy at the battle they were waging with the seventy-two shell counters. As they played, their talk was all of the languishing state of the Star of the Greeks, and how since her attempted flight to Antioch all the temper seemed to have burned out of her mettle.
"I protest, dear brother," quoth the worthy Wasik, studying the game-board, "doves of her feather cannot perch all day on a divan, saying and doing nothing, and not droop and moult in a way very grievous to Cid Iftikhar."
"The Cid's commands are very strait—refuse her nothing in reason, only make plain to her that he is the master. Wallah, I little like this manner of bird! To my mind there hatches trouble when a woman refuses so much as to rage at you. This very day I said in my heart, 'Go to, now, Hakem; pick a quarrel with the Star of the Greeks; she will be happier after giving a few pecks and claws.' I call the Most High to witness—she submitted to all my demands meekly, as though she were no eaglet, but a tethered lamb! An evil omen, I say. Allah forbid she should die! Iftikhar would make us pay with our heads!"
And Wasik shrugged his shoulders to show agreement with Hakem's last desire. Before he replied there was a loud knocking at the gate; the lazy porter stopped snoring, and began to shout to some one without.
"For the sake of Allah! O ye charitable!" was the cry from outside, evidently of a beggar demanding alms.
"Allah be your help! Go your way!" the porter was replying, and adding: "Off, O Khalid, blind son of a stone-blind hound! Must I again lay the staff across you!"