The fellâh contradicted Zeyd hotly: “Nay, may Allah prosper them. Art thou, then, also their enemy? Blessed guests have they been to our village. The fame of them has made us respected in all the neighborhood. They are good—the best possible—to their friends. What matter though they be bad to their enemies? Can all men use the same eyes? May Allah preserve them. In thy grace, O my dear!” Pressed by the old man’s heels, the donkey started, its shod hoofs waking echoes in that deep-walled place. Zeyd followed, in search of the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn, for whose safety he grew anxious. Talking of danger and punishment had brought into the foreground of his remembrance details which had failed to impress him at the time—in particular, the company of soldiers which had passed him by the city gate, and the confusion in the Frank’s mad speech of Shems-ud-dìn with the Circassians. Apprehensions, spurred by indigestion of the various insults he had been forced to stomach, made his soul groan within him. At unawares he ran instead of walked—a strange sight in the city at high noon. At length he stopped to inquire of a group of good Muslims standing gossiping before a cobbler’s stall, whether anyone had seen the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn and his unmistakable adherents. The men turned from their questioner to glance meaningly one at another. The cobbler it was who answered. “W’ Allah!” he exclaimed, pausing, needle in air, from his sewing at a certain slipper. “Go and ask at the Mehkemeh. A hundred Muslimûn are shut in there, and they say the English consul is judging them in place of our rightful Câdi. Ah, those Franks are devils. There is no end to their enormities. And our lords, who suffer them, are little better.” Zeyd stayed to hear no more. He ran on, panting, with misty eyes. Upon the fastened door of the courthouse a crowd pressed, enjoying a grievous outcry from within. “Ha, they beat the malefactors. That is good,” said a Nazarene to his neighbor. “He knows his business, this English consul.” Zeyd thundered in vain at the door. None opened, and the crowd jeered at him. With heart near to breaking, he gave up the attempt and ran headlong toward the Haràm. A great pulse throbbed in his brain, seeming the pulse of the whole world, for every object of his gaze beat with it. The aged Mahmûd Ali, Chief of the Learned in the Holy City, was coming out of the Mosque El Aksa on the arm of a young disciple—his senile blindness doubled for the moment by the sudden sunlight dropped on him like a dazzling veil—when Zeyd, the son of Abbâs, fell groveling at his feet. “Who is it, O my son?” quavered the sheykh, much alarmed; for he could not discern the form of the suppliant whether of man or beast. “It is some mad derwìsh,” replied the lad supporting him. “Nay, it is I, Zeyd, the servant of the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn. Mad am I now, and with reason, for they kill my master.” “O Allah, is it possible? Expound the matter, O most faithful of servants.”