In the twinkling of an eye there was a fray. Knives flashed, blood was drawn. Piercing screams of Frankish women came from the crowd around. The breath of each combatant was hot in the face of his antagonist, at such close quarters was the strife. One fell and was trampled under foot; another shrieked and threw up his hands, but was caught by a comrade. All at once rang out a voice of command. The guard returning from the church had surrounded them in the nick of time. The struggle ceased magically. The soldiers, inured to such work, separated the two factions neatly without partiality or insult. “It is a vengeance for blood,” cried Hassan. “These dogs slew my two sons. They have paid no indemnity. My cause is just!” “He is a liar; hear him not, O my lord! We know not him nor his sons.” “It is a blood feud; let them alone, O my children,” said the officer in command of the detachment, a man advanced in years. “Drive the one party back toward the church, the other on toward the tower, that they be fairly sundered.... When thou, O old wolf, next requirest the price of blood, see thou choose some spot more seemly than the heart of the city. Is there not land enough open in all the world that thou must needs choose this place?” “Art hurt, my son?” asked Hassan of Shibli, as they were driven toward the tower. “Aye, and that sorely,” replied the young man, nursing his two hands. “I had slain him who smote me, but that he escaped in the crowd.” “I smote thee, O valorous youth,” laughed one at his side. “Thou didst clasp me so tight from behind that I was hampered, so I pricked thy two hands.” At that there was loud laughter, and Shibli hung his head. “That soldier spoke sense,” observed Hassan later, when, freed from surveillance, they were returning to the khan. “Outside the walls is best for battle as for everything else. Thy horse is preserved to thee, O Thief. To-morrow, or the day after, we retire from the city. It is good at least to know that those Bedû are not favored above us. They have not procured rifles, or would they still be here among the jumpers of walls? By Allah’s leave, we may chance on their camping ground and make an end. At least, if Allah will, we can glean a little, out of sight of the garrison.” “We shall have all the wealth of the land, I swear it, so only that I keep my horse,” cried the Thief in rapture. It was with enthusiasm that all to whom Hassan spoke on the morrow heard of his decision to quit the city. His open abuse of a government which could refuse a few rifles to men worn out in its service, had alarmed the timorous and supple townsmen. He had inveighed against Abd-ur-Rahman Bey, a young man of the first influence, in terms almost treasonable, calling him selfish and impious, a dog who pushed back the gift of an old friend, and was above speaking to his own father. Sober men frown on such talk, and a certain rich merchant, overhearing some of it, had observed: