In Praousta, all was again uproar and confusion. Eight eunuchs of the mighty pacha, Cousrouf, accompanied by a detachment of twelve soldiers, came down from Cavalla at noon. They went directly to the house of the sheik, and demanded to see him. Djumeila, her eyes red with weeping, came to the door and told them her master was ill with grief and anxiety on account of the disappearance of his daughter. The eunuchs pushed her aside, and penetrated, in spite of her cries and attempts to bar their passage, into the room where the sheik lay on his divan, with pallid face and staring gaze. His lamentations were heartrending. His quivering lips continually cried: "Where is my daughter, where is my child?" They roughly forced him to his feet, and with savage threats demanded of the old man that he should deliver over to them their master's slave, his daughter Masa. Aroused from his torpor, he stares at them in amazement: "Slave!" cried he. "And you call her Masa, and my daughter; and you say it is she? Who calls Masa, daughter of the sheik, his slave?" "Our master does," said they--"our master, Cousrouf Pacha." "How can the stranger dare to call the daughter of a free man, a free girl, his slave?" "He dares do it because it is so," replied the eunuchs, shrugging their shoulders; "Masa sold herself to his excellency, our gracious master, to Cousrouf Pacha, when she procured your release by paying the second tax. You thought it was done out of kindness. No, Masa sold herself to our gracious master, Cousrouf Pacha, for one hundred gold sequins." "That is false; you lie, you wretches! You lie in all you say! You lie!" cried the sheik. He now stood erect, regarding them threateningly. "Do not dare to speak to me thus again! Justice and law still live! No one can say that Masa, my daughter, is a slave; and may he who says it stand accursed before Allah and the prophets!" The two eunuchs threw themselves upon him and held him fast. They then called two of the soldiers to their assistance, and bound him hand and foot. This done, they threw the old man contemptuously down upon his divan, and proceeded to ransack every part of the house in search of Masa, their master's runaway slave. There lay the sheik, bound and helpless, groaning and lamenting: "I am mad! I hear that which is not. I hear voices say that which cannot be. No, I am mad! It is impossible that Masa, the daughter of the Sheik of Praousta, is the slave of the stranger Turk! Impossible that I can have heard such a thing! Death or even madness is approaching me. It creeps stealthily toward me and stares at me wildly. O Masa, my daughter, come save your father!"