Hassan spoke in a jargon approaching Turkish interspersed with words of Arabic. Shems-ud-dìn understood what was said, though he would have been puzzled to separate the words. The friendliness of the speaker was, at all events, past question. He clapped his hands and a girl appeared from some inner chamber, bearing a tray, whereon was bread and curds and fruit, which the negro took from her and set before his master. “It is my woman,” said Hassan casually. “Thou hast not brought one with thee? A pity! Thou wilt sigh in vain. Now there is the daughter of my uncle—he who commands the colonists at Ain Tûbeh, six hours from here—a fine girl, plump and tractable. My uncle would resign her to thee at a fair price—that is, if he have not already struck a bargain with the dealer. It is a custom from of old with us to sell the pretty ones. So they become the mothers of great men, perchance even of the Sultàn’s majesty.” “I have not given thought to woman these many days,” said Shems-ud-dìn, with the look of sad remembrance. “My fair one, my Leylah, died in childbed awhile since, my desire with her. A long story, O my friend! It began at Edreyneh, whither I had gone, by invitation of my friend, the learned Mustafa, to preach throughout Ramadan in the mosque of Sultàn Selìm——” “By thy leave,” broke in Hassan, “the morning calls us. At noon or in the evening we can tell our stories. Come forth now, and let me show thee this place of dogs.” No sooner did they leave the house, than men emerged from adjacent dwellings and walked with them till, ere they had traversed half the town, they headed a multitude. Hassan led the way by foul and narrow alleys to the open hill where stood the remains of great buildings, whose smooth pillars and finely wrought capitals contrasted the rudeness of the modern stonework. “These are the work of the jinn,” said a voice from the crowd. “The devils still hold festival here of nights when there is no moon.” Here in the arena of a ruined amphitheater Milhem’s tent was pitched. Around it half-dressed soldiers were grooming their horses to the entertainment of a swarm of noisy children. Hassan went forward to the tent; Shems-ud-dìn, in enjoyment of the morning sun, sat down upon a fallen column with his face to the blaze. The flat mud roofs of the town formed a succession of terrace steps beneath him, descending to a stony wady, beyond which swelled the wilderness of barren rocks. A patch of verdure by the town spring, a few olive trees down in the ravine, a few poor fig trees among the ruins near to where he sat—all else was bronze and purple of the desert hills. “Even such a land,” he mused aloud, “did our lord Muhammed (peace to him) inhabit of old. Amid such solitudes did the angel of God converse with him to the salvation of man and jinni.”