Zohrab, more of a soldier than a logician, and readier with his sabre than his tongue, was unable quite to follow the strange argument of the Khond; he could only glare at him with bent brows and dilated nostrils, while asserting angrily that which had nothing exactly to do with the matter--that he believed devoutly in the power and miracles of his Prophet--that the waters gushed at will from the fingers of the latter--that he was conveyed by a mysterious animal, called a Borak, from Mecca to Jerusalem--that in one night he performed a journey of ten thousand years--that a holy pigeon, sent from heaven, whispered revelations in his ear,--not to pick peas thereat, as the accursed Kaffirs asserted,--that he proselytised the Genii, and did many more incredible things: to all of which the Hindoo, whose beliefs were altogether of a different kind, listened with the stolid aspect of one of his own bronze idols; but the Khond did so with covert mockery on his terrible face; while poor Mabel dreaded a growing quarrel, as it was evident that the fiery and impatient Zohrab abhorred the companionship and protection of Ferishta Lodi; for he was a reckless soldier, valuing his own life little, and the lives of others less. It was evident that, in the heat of the present discussion, he had forgotten all about her, till suddenly the Khond said-- "We talk too loud, aga, and may be overheard. I told you who were on your track----" "Yes; and by the eight gates of paradise, and the seven gates of hell, I am not likely to forget them!" "Well, have you taken means to ensure flight?" "Wherefor?" asked Zohrab fiercely. "I mean, if traced." "I have my sword and horse," was the curt reply. "But the Feringhee woman?" "Allah! I had all but forgotten her!" said Zohrab, starting. "Right: sacrifice your property for your life, and your life for your religion; but make not yourself the captive of a woman. Now, if traced, what, I ask, of the Kaffir slave?" "By the soul of the Prophet!" exclaimed Zohrab, in great and sudden perplexity, "what can I do, but leave her here?" "Sell her to the young Shah: she is worth a thousand mohurs," suggested the Hindoo banker. "The coward has fled," said Zohrab. "She is beautiful as the one he lost, and whom he mourned so much that it required the whole seraglio to console him." "Poor fellow!" sneered Zohrab. "I will buy her of you for two hundred tomauns, paid down," said the Khond. "Money is useful to those who are fugitives." "Buy her--for a wife?" asked Zubberdust, changing colour. The Khond laughed; and his laugh was as the growl of some strange animal, as he replied-- "No: a Khond marries a Khond." "For what, then?" "The purposes of that religion we have been discussing just now," replied the other, deliberately and in a low voice.