Achmet saw, felt the presence of the slaves behind him, and shrank back numbed and appalled. A mist came before his eyes; the voice he heard summoning him to stand up seemed to come from infinite distances. The hand of doom had fallen like a thunderbolt. The leathern thong in the hands of the slave was the token of instant death. There was no chance of escape. The Nubians had him at their mercy. As his brain struggled to regain its understanding, he saw, as in a dream, David enter the court-yard and come towards Kaid. Suddenly David stopped in amazement, seeing Achmet. Inquiringly he looked at Kaid, who spoke earnestly to him in a low tone. Whereupon David turned his head away, but after a moment fixed his eyes on Achmet. Kaid motioned all his startled guests to come nearer. Then in strong, unmerciful voice he laid Achmet’s crime before them, and told the story of the bridge-opener, who had that day expiated his crime in the desert by the hands of Mahommed--but not with torture, as Mahommed had hoped might be. “What shall be his punishment--so foul, so wolfish?” Kaid asked of them all. A dozen voices answered, some one terrible thing, some another. “Mercy!” moaned Achmet aghast. “Mercy, Saadat!” he cried to David. David looked at him calmly. There was little mercy in his eyes as he answered: “Thy crimes sent to their death in the Nile those who never injured thee. Dost thou quarrel with justice? Compose thy soul, and I pray only the Effendina to give thee that seemly death thou didst deny thy victims.” He bowed respectfully to Kaid. Kaid frowned. “The ways of Egypt are the ways of Egypt, and not of the land once thine,” he answered shortly. Then, under the spell of that influence which he had never yet been able to resist, he added to the slaves: “Take him aside. I will think upon it. But he shall die at sunrise ere the army goes. Shall not justice be the gift of Kaid for an example and a warning? Take him away a little. I will decide.” As Achmet and the slaves disappeared into a dark corner of the court-yard, Kaid rose to his feet, and, upon the hint, his guests, murmuring praises of his justice and his mercy and his wisdom, slowly melted from the court-yard; but once outside they hastened to proclaim in the four quarters of Cairo how yet again the English Pasha had picked from the Tree of Life an apple of fortune. The court-yard was now empty, save for the servants of the Prince, David and Mahommed, and two officers in whom David had advised Kaid to put trust. Presently one of these officers said: “There is another singer, and the last. Is it the Effendina’s pleasure?” Kaid made a gesture of assent, sat down, and took the stem of a narghileh between his lips. For a moment there was silence, and then, out upon the sweet, perfumed night, over which the stars hung brilliant and soft and near, a voice at first quietly, then fully, and palpitating with feeling, poured forth an Eastern love song: