Seti then had weighed his chances, had seen the avenging friends of Ebn Haroun behind the ghaffirs, and therefore permitted himself to be marched off to the mudirieh. There the Mudir glared at him and had him loaded with chains and flung into the prison, where two hundred convicts arrayed themselves against myriad tribes which, killed individually, made a spot on the wall no bigger than a threepenny-bit! The carnage was great, and though Seti was sleepless night after night it was not because of his crime. He found some solace, however, in provoking his fellow-prisoners to assaults upon each other; and every morning he grinned as he saw the dead and wounded dragged out into the clear sunshine. The end to this came when the father of Seti, Abou Seti, went at night to the Mudir and said deceitfully: "Effendi, by the mercy of Heaven I have been spared even to this day; for is it not written in the Koran that a man shall render to his neighbour what is his neighbour's? What should Abou Seti do with ten feddans of land, while the servant of Allah, the Effendi Insagi, lives? What is honestly mine is eight feddans, and the rest, by the grace of God, is thine, O effendi." Every feddan he had he had honestly earned, but this was his way of offering backsheesh. And the Mudir had due anger and said: "No better are ye than a Frank to have hidden the truth so long and waxed fat as the Nile rises and falls. The two feddans, as thou sayest, are mine." Abou Seti bowed low, and rejoined, "Now shall I sleep in peace, by the grace of Heaven, and all my people under my date-trees--and all my people?" he added, with an upward look at the Mudir. "But the rentals of the two feddans of land these ten years--thou hast eased thy soul by bringing the rentals thereof?" Abou Seti's glance fell and his hands twitched. His fingers fumbled with his robe of striped silk. He cursed the Mudir in his heart for his bitter humour; but was not his son in prison, and did it not lie with the Mudir whether he lived or died? So he answered: "All-seeing and all-knowing art thou, O effendi, and I have reckoned the rentals even to this hour for the ten years--fifty piastres for each feddan--" "A hundred for the five years of high Nile," interposed the Mudir. "Fifty for the five lean years, and a hundred for the five fat years," said Abou Seti, and wished that his words were poisoned arrows, that they might give the Mudir many deaths at once. "And may Allah give thee greatness upon thy greatness!" "God prosper thee also, Abou Seti, and see that thou keep only what is thine own henceforth. Get thee gone in peace." "At what hour shall I see the face of my son alive?" asked Abou Seti in a low voice, placing his hand upon his turban in humility.