"Wallah; is not your joy my joy, soul of my soul!" cried he, earnestly. "Not gay? Allah forbid that there be truth in portents. As at noon we rested, and I slept under the trees, I dreamt that I was grievously plucked by the hair."
"And that forbodes—?"
"That some calamity or ill news comes either to me or to some dear to me. So our Arabian diviners interpret dreams, and so some years since Al-Aāzid, my master at Cordova, instructed me."
"Christ defend us!" quoth Richard, crossing himself. He was not imagining ill for himself nor for Musa, but for Mary Kurkuas.
"Be not troubled," continued the Spaniard; "the surest presages often fail." Richard rode on in silence. The melancholy of his friend was contagious. A cloud drifted over the sun; the bright landscape darkened. As they passed by a wayside cross on the hillside, a skeleton swung from an oak in the hot wind—some brigand or villain, who had enraged the seigneur. A wretched beggar met them, just as they plunged into the trees to enter the valley.
"Alms! alms! kind lord," he croaked, his face red with bloody patches; and as he spoke he lay on the ground, and foamed as if grievously ill.
"Away with you!" growled Sebastian, angrily; "you have smeared blood on your face, and there is a bit of soap in your cheeks."
So they left, and heard his shrill curse, when he saw Richard tossed forth never a denier.
"No good omens," muttered Herbert, in his beard.
"Ride faster," commanded Richard, touching spur to Rollo.