“If I try to open this door, I shall rouse my guardian. If I wake him, will he grant my prayers? Certainly not. Will he yield to my threats? No; he will only laugh at them. If I disturb his slumbers, therefore, it will be to place him in a position of great difficulty, which I should exceedingly regret. It will be better, then, not to wake him!”--and Murad quietly thrust the point of his sword down the sleeper’s throat, and quitted the place. The first thing he had to do was to cross the gardens. It seemed as if he had never seen them before. The fountains falling back into their basins made a silvery tinkling, which formed a ravishing accompaniment to the song of the nightingales. The bats, which looked like great leather birds, wheeled in circles through the air upon noiseless wings. The trees, allowing the moonbeams to filter through their foliage, flung mosaics of light and shade upon the sward. Murad fancied he saw one of the marble lions move, and started back, but speedily seeing his mistake, was heartily ashamed of himself, although he knew there was no one near to laugh at his alarm. If a real lion had chanced to pass at that moment he would have had to pay for the fright which the statue had cost Murad. As soon as he had recovered the first feeling of surprise at the novelty, of the scene, Murad, who was not exactly of a poetic temperament, hurried on. What he wanted to see was not the garden--fine enough in its way, but only a prison, beyond the walls of which he had never wandered at liberty--where every step he set was on a well-kept lawn. He wanted freedom of space and chance adventure. He sprang over the wall and fell into the midst of a detachment of Nubians going their rounds. When he saw the guards coming he said to himself, “These people have run away once, so they may do it again. Ought I to wait for them to come? No! My best plan is to rush upon them.” He did so. They met. The first who encountered him had reason to regret it, but his regret did not last long. In two minutes he was dead. Murad flung some silver to the others and plunged into the thicket. [Illustration: 049] The Nubians left their dead comrade on the ground, but they picked up the money. It is, however, a matter of time to find coins in long grass, even by the bright light of an Eastern moon, so that Murad could escape at leisure, and at last reached a sombre and dense wood. When, however, the Nubians had divided the spoil, their captain called them together, and said-- “You are a pack of cowards and fools. This was but a lad we had to do with--some precious young rascal, who has just been making a hole in the royal treasury. Why, he’s a mine of wealth, that boy--a stream of riches, which glided away between our legs after besprinkling us with a few silver drops. We must track it to the fountain head. He escaped in this direction. Our own interests, as well as our duties, point out plainly enough the course we should take.”