From the lowest branch of the tree, just overhead, hung a strip of brightness, fluttering, among other similar strips by no means bright. This strip was new, the rest were very old. Moreover, a sunbeam threading the maze of twigs had singled it out for illumination. The sheykh stared and stared. Those colors—green and white in stripes, with a slender thread of crimson down the green—were most familiar. He had bought a piece of silk of that pattern not long ago of a traveling merchant, and had made of it a garment for Alia. He turned toward the litter. A hush had fallen on the group around him. “O Fatmeh, come forth! Whence is this silken rag? How comes it to hang here?” “Rag! What rag?” screamed the woman, creeping out through the curtains. “Allah witness! What have I to do with it? Is it my tree that I should be held accountable for all that grows on it? Allah forbid!...” Her voice, which had arisen shrill and brazen, soon quavered and broke. The grins of the Circassians cut the ground from under her. She fell on her face before Shems-ud-dìn, in a paroxysm of repentance. “How often have I forbidden thee all traffic with this tree? A wrong to myself I had forgiven; but this is an insult to the providence of God. Henceforth I wash my two hands of thee. Return to thy kindred, and may Allah bless thee!” Fatmeh rolled on the ground in convulsions of shame and grief. She shrieked to the bystanders to slay her then and there. But the sheykh stood by his horse, obdurate. He surveyed her contortions without mercy, till a new voice of lamentation smote his ear. “O Lord!... O my father!... Be not so wicked!... O Allah, turn my father’s heart to pity! Wouldst thou slay me quite, now, immediately? Thou knowest I am nothing without Fatmeh! I will die—yes, die now—and punish thy wickedness. Oh, woe upon us! Woe! Woe!” The thin face of Alia looked forth unveiled between the curtains. It was distorted with pain and fury, most ugly to look upon. Shibli made a wry face behind her father’s back. It was the first time for many months that he had seen the likeness of his betrothed. The sheykh stood gaping, at a loss for a word. “Arise, O woman, and resume thy place beside her,” he said at last lamely. The spectators smiled and shrugged shoulders one at another. But in a moment their looks changed to horror. The Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn lifted his right arm and, taking hold of the bright rag, pulled with might. The silk tore with the shriek of a living thing. He threw it away and straight remounted his horse, heedless of the piercing cries of Fatmeh. CHAPTER IV The first night of travel was spent at a village occupied by a colony of Circassians. Here, naturally, they met with a warm welcome. The guest chamber of the head man was allotted to Hassan and Shems-ud-dìn; Alia and Fatmeh were accommodated in the same house; and the rest of the party found hospitable quarters, though the most part slept, from choice, under the open sky.