Muhammed blessed him and went. His tone throughout, though cringing, had been straightforward, without a trace of that conscious subtlety which had disfigured his behavior upon former occasions. It was the manner of a merchant who, seeing his customer in act to depart, through fear of losing him, speaks truth for the first time. CHAPTER XV It was close upon sunrise when Hassan Agha and his men threaded the burrows of the city to the northern gate. Few moved abroad beside themselves. Dogs slunk drowsily along by the walls, seeking lairs for the day. Once past the gate and its stretching shadow, they all with one accord clapped spurs to their horses. Away they galloped, shouting, through olive groves where the sunrise reddened one side of the knotty trunks, and awoke a pearly sheen in the gray mistlike foliage. Past old rock tombs, past caverns fledged with fern, they dashed in the pink of morning. From an eminence, the city walls appeared a blue cloud line just beneath the sun. The rays smote their shoulders with a loving hand. They were free. Shibli rode with them by indulgence of the Sheykh Shems-ud-dìn, before whom they had laid their plan overnight. The saint had heard them listlessly, as from a distance. He had approved of everything with the slight impatience of one in haste to be rid of questions. But not so Zeyd, the son of Abbâs. Sure that they were bent on some iniquity, the fellâh had done all in the power of grimaces and private signals to arouse misgiving in his master, all in vain; till at length, with a shrug for an obtuseness which he knew for the God-sent rind of sanctity, he accepted the inevitable. Executing a circular bow to comprise all the enemy, he had besought them to brighten once again the village of his wife’s sister’s husband’s uncle, who, poor good man, would thus be rendered the happiest of living creatures. When Hassan welcomed the suggestion, Zeyd had praised Allah as for a favor done to himself. He looked to harvest from the lips of his distant relative such clear evidence of their wickedness as should convince even a saint’s incredulity. But Hassan was not going to seek that village until the evening. He wished to celebrate the release from entombing walls by a day’s ride in quest of adventure. Letting the horses resume a quiet pace, they joked and chatted together, while the land led them onward by waves. At length, from between some ancient olive trees which watched a sea of corn, they beheld a flat-roofed village with three upper chambers like towers projecting above the herd of dwellings. “There, in sh’ Allah, we will break our fast,” said Hassan, to the joy of Shibli, who, from excessive delight in the ride, was very hungry.