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 in early youth, as is clear from the same examples. A jar, even though broken, preserves the odour with which it was imbued when new. When a tree is young its branches spread out all round it, and remain in this position for hundreds of years, until it is cut down. Wool is so tenacious of the colour with which it is first dyed, that it cannot be bleached. The wooden hoop of a wheel, which has been bent into a curve, will break into a thousand pieces rather than return to straightness. And similarly, in a man, first impressions cling so fast that nothing but a miracle can remove them. It is therefore most prudent that men be shaped to the standard of wisdom in early youth.

8. Finally, it is most dangerous if a man be not imbued with the cleanly precepts of life from his very cradle. For, when the external senses begin to fulfil their functions, the mind of man cannot remain at rest, and, if not engaged with what is useful, it occupies itself with the vainest and even with harmful things (a process which is assisted by the evil examples of a corrupt age), while later on, if it wish to unlearn what it has acquired, it finds this impossible or very difficult; as we have already shown. Hence the world is full of enormities which neither the civil magistrates nor the ministers of the Church are able to quell, since no serious attention is given to the source from which the evil flows.

9. If, then, each man have the welfare of his own children at heart, and if that of the human race be dear to the civil and ecclesiastical guardians of human affairs, let them hasten to make provision for the timely planting, pruning, and watering of the plants of heaven, that these may be prudently formed to make prosperous advances in letters, virtue, and piety.


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1. shown that those plants of Paradise, Christian children, cannot grow up like a forest, but need tending, we must now see on whom this care should fall. It is indeed the most natural duty of parents to see that the lives for which they are responsible shall be rational, virtuous, and pious. God Himself bears witness that this was Abraham’s custom, when He says: “For I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment” (Gen. xviii. 19). He demands it from parents in general, with this command: “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be upon thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deut. vi. 7). By the Apostle also He says: “And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but nurture them in the chastening and admonition of the Lord” (Ephes. vi. 4).

2. But, since human occupations as well as human beings have multiplied, it is rare to find men who have either sufficient knowledge or sufficient leisure to instruct their children. The wise habit has therefore arisen of giving

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 over children, for their common education, to select persons, conspicuous for their knowledge of affairs and their soberness of morals. To such instructors of the young the name of preceptor, master, schoolmaster, or professor has been applied, while the places destined for this common instruction have been named schools, elementary schools, lecture-rooms, colleges, public schools, and universities.

3. On the authority of Josephus we learn that the patriarch Shem opened the first school, just after the flood. Later, this was called the Hebrew school. Who does not know that in Chaldæa, especially in Babylon, there were many schools, in which the arts, including astronomy, were cultivated? since, later on (in the time of Nebuchadnezzar), Daniel and his companions were instructed in the wisdom of the Chaldæans (Dan. i. 20), as was also the case with Moses in Egypt (Acts vii. 22). By the command of God, schools were set up in all the towns of the children of Israel; they were called synagogues, and in them the Levites used to teach the law. These lasted till the coming of Christ, and became renowned through His teaching and that of His Apostles. The custom of erecting schools was borrowed by the Romans from the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Jews, and from the Romans it spread throughout their whole empire, especially when the religion of Christ became universal through the care of pious princes and bishops. History relates that Charlemagne, whenever he subjected any heathen race, forthwith ordained for it bishops and learned men, and erected churches and schools; and after him the other Christian emperors, kings, nobles, and magistrates have increased the number of schools so much that they are innumerable.

4. It is to the interest of the whole Christian republic that this Godly custom be not only retained but increasedas well, and that in every well-ordered habitation of man (whether a city, a town, or a village), a school or place ofeducation for the young be erected. This is demanded:—


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, going back to the old nurse's vituperations and tears and frantic appeals to Allah, the Prophet, and a variety of Moslem saints that reverberated through the Gengizkhani palace from turret to cellar, causing the eunuchs to touch their blue beads as a protection against evil, and the servants huddled over the cook pots to cringe as if expecting a beating, it was perhaps natural enough that the princess, in a moment of exuberant joy, should have obeyed the strange summons without suspecting a trap.

For, after all, a high-caste Oriental girl is in everything except a frank knowledge and discussion of sex questions and a certain familiarity with the tortuous mazes of palace politics, very much like a European or American girl hedged in by the gently nefarious and nefariously gentle, inhibiting social regulations that are the result of the Mid-Victorian inheritance of cant—the world, to both the former and the latter, offering nothing to do except a rather functionless existence varied by calls, genteel literature, genteel athletics, and genteel dusting.

In the case of the European girl, it is the parent who does the step-by-step supervising, while in that

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 of Aziza Nurmahal it was the old nurse who ruled, socially, for all her menial position.

Thus the little princess was unprepared to cope with the unexpected—such as the strange summons.

A summons—by the lips of a rough, fur-capped Afghan charpadar who had bullied his way past the sentinels, through outer and inner courtyard, up the stairs, and into the ante-room of the harem where he had startled a pert-eyed, golden-skinned slave girl into attention by methods peculiar; methods that combined bribery, flattery, brutality, and open, rather riotous love-making.

Tell the princess that I am here!” he had said, with a lordly air.

“Thou?” The girl had made a mocking salaam. “And who then art thou? Art thou the Ameer of Bokhara? The Amban of Kashgar? The Rajah of Karpathala? Or perhaps His Majesty the yellow Emperor of far China himself?”

He had flipped a coin into her ready hand.

“One thing I would like to be,” he had replied, staring at her out of his bold eyes until she had blushed, “and one thing I am!”

“Yes?”

“Indeed, O Small Bud to be worn in the Turban of my Heart! For I would like to be thy lover! I would like to crush thy lips with mine. I would like to hold thy soft, trembling body with the impatient strength of my arms. But—by the scarlet pig's bristles!—it is only the vain wind of desire tickling my nostrils and shortening my breath. For thou art

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 a perfumed jewel, palace born, palace bred, palace spoiled. The longing in thy downy heart is for a silk clad, jessamine scented courtier, while I”—and he had had the unblushing effrontery to simulate a melancholy sigh—“am only a rough Afghan, a Soleymani of Soleymanis!”

“What then dost thou want with the princess—being only an Afghan?”

“News—I bring her! Splendid news! Happy news! Joyful news! News slashed with sun gold and nicked with the moon's silver glitter! News that will cause her to fill thy lap and mine with seventeen camels' loads of red Persian gold! But—the message is secret, Rejoicer of Souls! There must be no blabbing to that dried-up and malodorous goat udder of an Ayesha Zemzem, nor to that cousin of a dung heap who calls himself Al Nakia, nor to any leaky palace tongue. These be news only for the princess' rosy ears!"

“But—consider the laws of the harem …”

“Consider the pimples on the back of a cockroach! Laws! Do not quote laws to an Afghan. To do so would be like reciting the Koran to the buffalo about to gore thee. Away with thee, O Small, Soft Thing"—pinching her cheeks—“and call thy mistress!”

The slave girl had left, to return, a few minutes later, with the princess who, at the Afghan's first words, spoken in a very low voice, had burst into a shout of joy, and a quick exclamation of:

“The Haj—” as quickly stopped by the man's warning hiss:

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“No, no, Heaven-Born! Be careful!”

And he had whispered to her at length, winding up with “I do not know his reasons. I am his servant. I listen and I obey. And so I gave thee the message he gave me. Come with me—at once—Heaven-Born!”

Just for a moment the princess had hesitated.

“I—I can't go alone with thee,” she had said, but with a light in her eyes, as if she would like to be persuaded that she could.

“Why not?”

“It is against the customs …”

“Of the harem! Of course!”

The man had laughed ironically, had grumbled, then, with a shrug of his shoulders, had continued:

“It is against my orders. But thou art the Princess Aziza Nurmahal, the ruler of this land, and, if thou dost insist, take a servant along—one servant—perhaps this little slave girl?”

“No. I shall take my chief eunuch!”

“Good. That should be enough to guard even as lacy and twisted a thing as Tamerlani propriety and Tamerlani etiquette. But—thou must hurry. Why? Who am I to know, Heaven-Born? I am only a rough Afghan executing the orders he gave me. Come—and tell that little ball of quivering, soft nothings over there”—indicating the slave girl who was trying to catch a word now and then—“to be silent about the whole affair—silent as the sands.”

The princess had spoken to the slave, enjoining her to secrecy, had left, and had returned, shortly afterwards, veiled from head to foot in a swathing, disfiguring

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 black horsehair ferauj, and accompanied by Mahsud Hakki, the chief eunuch to whom she had evidently confided the story of the mysterious summons; for the Nubian was laughing with a great flash of even, white teeth and waving a plum-colored paw at the Afghan in hearty greeting.

'Many, many moons have I longed for the sight of the Hajji Akh—”

“Silence, babbler!” had come the Afghan's rough, angry interruption. “Walls have ears—and so have”—he had walked up to the slave girl and had shaken her—“so have little, soft, downy things! Little, soft, downy things that will have their ears cut off if they babble and blab!”

Then all three had left, leaving the harem by a back stairway that led to the kitchen and was hardly ever used this time of the day, down to a small, walled garden heavy with the acrid scent of marigold and the pungent sweetness of red jessamine, thence by an underground passage known only to a few that, running for nearly a mile, opened, through a grass covered, intricate trap door, into a curious congeries of houses not far from the Ghulan River, within sight of the dead Ameer's mausoleum—the combined Hell's Kitchen, Rue de Venise, and Pimlico of the capital, the hiding-place of those who were in distress, and in debt, and in trouble of every kind; a place where brawling and bibbing of forbidden spirits and murder were the order of the day; where vice ran freely in and out of a dozen painted doors, where the pungent fumes of the Black Smoke rose nightly in morose spirals, where recklessness dwelt side by side with

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 shame, and shame with disease … the slums of Tamerlanistan—the mildewed spot in the healthy plant of the town.

Thus Afghan, eunuch, and princess had left the sheltered security of the palace, the latter's heart beating like the heart of a girl in finishing school who, for the first time in her life, unchaperoned, unbeknown to parents and teachers, goes to a matinée with a member of the male sex; while the little slave girl had looked after them in a mixture of curiosity and trepidation, but obeying the injunction of silence and secrecy which Aziza Nurmahal had put upon her.

The little slave girl had been rather prey to conflicting emotions. For she had overheard some of the Afghan charpadar's words, and less hedged in by inhibiting conventions, had been conscious of a faint, marring taint of treachery in the Afghan's hearty words and jovial manner. But she feared the princess' quick tongue—just a shade less than she feared the old nurse's quick hand.

So she had waited, nervously expectant, wishing for the princess' return; and then, two hours later, excited sounds had come from the palace courtyard, cries, and a question peaking out from the turmoil:

“Mahsud! Mahsud Hakki! What has happened—for the love of Allah?”

And Ayesha Zemzem, who had been peacefully dozing over a soothing pipe of yellow Latakia tobacco cut with dawamesk-hashish, had jumped up, immediately wide-awake as is the habit of old people, had rushed down the stairs, out to the courtyard, and

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 had found there, supported by half-a-dozen soldiers and servants, the moaning, blood-covered figure of the chief eunuch.

He had died even as Ayesha Zemzem reached his side; had died, 'with the words on his frothing lips:

“Aziza Nurmahal—the mausoleum—the Afghan—Hajji Akhbar Khan …”

And, with a choked rattling noise in his throat, he had sunk on the ground, one hand flung across his lacerated face as if to ward off Fate.

“Aziza Nurmahal? Hajji Akhbar Khan? The Afghan—what Afghan? What is all this blabbing and gabbing?” the old nurse had demanded, looking down at the dead man as if she wanted to shake the answer from his limp body; and, more gently:

“Who murdered thee, faithful old friend?! Who …”

She had interrupted herself, had turned to the tense, startled crowd of servants and soldiers and courtiers, taking charge of the situation as usual.

“Where is the princess?” she had continued. “Go—somebody—and fetch her. Perhaps she has the key to this pukka devil's mystery!”

It was then that Kumar Zaida, the little slave girl who had joined the group, had decided that she must tell what she knew; and she had told about the rough Afghan charpadar, how he had come with a mysterious message for the princess, how he had whispered to her, how she herself had not been able to understand every word, but, judging from scraps of

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 talk here and there, believed that the Afghan had come as a messenger from Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, returned from the far places who, it seemed, was awaiting the princess in the mausoleum of the late Ameer, by the banks of the Ghulan River.

“Allah!” Ayesha Zemzem had exclaimed. “A clumsy trap! There is nothing near that part of the river banks except desolation! A trap fit for idiots and unthinking children! And, dost thou mean to say, Kumar Zaida, that thou …?”

“Who was I to argue?” the slave girl had defended herself. “The princess ordered me to be silent. The Afghan, too, said it was important that nobody knew about the message or the going. Maybe”—bold and arrogant since she knew that she would get a beating whatever happened—“maybe they did not trust thee, old woman …”

But her last words had been swallowed in the nurse's furious, high-pitched demand:

“Why didst thou not come to me, fool? Why didst thou not tell me, O daughter of a mangy and very unbeautiful she-pig?”

Flopp!—her bony old hand descended on the girl's bare shoulder; and then came the scene which so boisterously interrupted the prosy business discussion between Hector Wade and Mr. Ezra Warburton, the former dashing off at a thundering gallop, and Ayesha Zemzem raging through the palace like a miniature whirlwind of fury … fury suddenly scotched, as she entered the princess' apartment and, looking about her, discovered that the ancient, straight-bladed sword

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 was not in its accustomed place, nor anywhere else, though she searched the rooms thoroughly.

The ancient sword which had been across the dead Ameer's knees during the funeral procession!

The sword with which Aziza Nurmahal had enforced her will when Koom Khan had spoken mutinous words!

The sword which, according to the tradition of the Gengizkhani family, would mate with the other blade, the one which Hector Wade had found in the lumber room of Dealle Castle and which had been the cause of all his twisted, motley adventures!

The sword with which even at that moment Aziza Nurmahal was defending herself, stabbing and cutting until her slim arms ached and her breath came in short, staccato bursts, while the Afghan charpadar, who, with a great, bellowing laugh, had declared himself to be Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, governor of the western marches—“and soon thy husband, little princess, soon the father of thy sons, soon Ameer of Tamerlanistan!”—kept dancing away from her, catching blows and thrusts on his metal-bossed arm shield, without using his own weapon.

“For I do not wish to injure thee, O Moon of Delight! And soon thou wilt be tired with this dancing about and unwomanly wielding of steel. And then I shall gather thee in my arms and carry thee away, and—ahee!—but thou shalt find my love strong and I thine sweet!”

Abderrahman Yahiah Khan had no thought for Mahsud Hakki, the eunuch, whom he had cut down as soon as they had entered the mausoleum. The man

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 had crawled away, mortally injured, doubtless to bleed to death somewhere by the deserted river bank.

And the princess fought on, frightened, in despair, but resolved with all the stubbornness of the Gengizkhani blood to die rather than submit, the point of her sword dancing in ever weakening circles, while, back in the palace, the old nurse raised lean arms to heaven.

“By Allah and by Allah!” the nurse exclaimed. “The little princess has more sense than I thought! Enough sense, at least, to have taken along the Luck of the Gengizkhani—and if Al Nakia reaches there in time, both ancient blades will sing the song of blood together. Wooing indeed! Mating indeed! As swords and men and women should mate—in battle! Perhaps”—she whispered—“perhaps it is not too late …”

And she sank on her knees, facing Mecca, and cried as if her heart would break, and prayed, fervently:

“Against the night when it overtaketh me, and against the black lust of the wicked and the bad, I betake me for refuge to Allah, the Lord of Daybreak! O Allah, speed Thou Al Nakia's horse! O Allah, listen Thou to the prayer of this foolish old woman! O Allah, do Thou protect and save the little princess who is to me like the light of a friendly house in the screaming night of storms—who is the cradle of my soul—who is the inner jewel in the shrine of my withered heart!”

Thus the prayer on Ayesha Zemzem's lips; and a prayer, too, was in the heart of Hector Wade as he

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 5. (i) By the admirable method of transacting business which is in common use. For, as the head of a household makes use of various craftsmen when he has no leisure time to prepare what is necessary for his household economy, why should he make any difference in the case of education? When he needs flour, he goes to the miller; when flesh, to the butcher; when drink, to the inn-keeper; when clothing, to the tailor; when shoes, to the cobbler; when a house, a ploughshare, or a key, to the builder, the smith, or the locksmith. Again, we have churches for religious instruction, and law courts and assembly rooms in which to discuss the causes of litigants and make weighty announcements to the assembled people; why not schools also for the young? Farmers do not feed their own pigs and cows, but keep hired herdsmen who feed them all at one time, while their masters, free from distraction, transact their own business. For this is a marvellous saving of labour, when one man, undisturbed by other claims on his attention, confines himself to one thing; in this way one man can be of use to many, and many to one man.

6. (ii) By necessity, because it is very seldom that parents have sufficient ability or sufficient leisure to teach their children. The consequence is that there has arisen a class of men who do this one thing alone, as a profession, and that by this means the advantage of the whole community is attained.

7. (iii) And although there might be parents with leisure to educate their own children, it is nevertheless better that the young should be taught together and in large classes, since better results and more pleasure are to be obtained when one pupil serves as an example and a stimulus for another. For to do what we see others do, to go where others go, to follow those who are ahead of us, and to keep in front of those who are behind us, is the course of action to which we are all most naturally inclined.


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 rode through the streets of the town, scattering the haggling market throngs, driving some into doorways and coffee houses and mosques, causing others to snap their fingers rapidly to ward off evil spirits; for, assuredly, Al Nakia had lost the light of his reason. He, the strong, the gentle, the just, to graze a little playing child in the fury of his gallop, causing it to cry and sob and run, frightened, to its mother—he, the sober, the sane, the patient, to leap his horse across a lumbering ox cart that was not quick enough to get out of his way!

“By the Prophet!” said an old market woman, pityingly, “the stars in his soul have turned black! Madness is upon him!”

And, superstitiously, she touched the little blue-enameled “hand of Ali” she wore in her flat bosom, while Hector thundered on, twisting and turning through the twisting, turning streets, toward the baroque mass of the mausoleum that loomed up in the distance. On!—though his horse was ready to give up, its head bowed on its heaving, lathering chest, the lungs pumping the hot air painfully with a deep, rattling noise.

But he bent over the animal's neck, lifting it with every stride.

They stared after him, the men of Tamerlanistan, some angry, some mocking, some astonished; then, presently, as the tale of the trap into which Aziza Nurmahal had fallen drifted out of the palace on the servants babbling lips and was repeated from mouth to mouth, in bazaar and mosque and caravanserai, there were expressions of sympathy and pity;

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 and there was more than one, peasant and noble, merchant and green-turbaned, wide-stepping shareef, who threw leg across saddle and was off after Al Nakia's flying figure to help.

But they did not catch up with him, who was riding as he had never ridden before, his left hand twisted in the horse's braided mane after the rein had broken under the strain and the surcingle was beginning to split, sliding the huge saddle to a dangerous angle.

On!—past bazaar and mosque and scarlet-flaming garden, with the gray dust swirling up in spirals, and doorways and posterns echoing the click-click-clicketty-click of the horse's feet; straight through a kafila of shaggy, northern dromedaries dragging along their loads over the cobble-stoned pavement, scattering on the market-place a desert man's impromptu camp fire, frightening the tiny donkeys that tripped under their burdens of charcoal and fiery-colored vegetables and onyx-eyed Persian pussy cats, pirouetting dangerously amongst the two-wheeled country carts that cluttered the souk!

Off and away!—kicking loose his feet from his stirrups and letting the saddle drop to the ground from underneath him, as girth and surcingle burst completely, jerking the horse to one side so that its frantic feet did not strike the saddle's horn nor become en tangled in the leathers, and riding the animal bare-back, sitting tight and hard on the high-peaked withers.

The ancient Oriental blade was in his hand as he jumped from the horse and rushed thorough the open door of the mausoleum.

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“Aziza! Aziza Nurmahal!”

His call echoed through the vaulted, white-stuccoed halls where slept the princess' ancestors, from the rough shepherd who, followed by a few thousand yellow-skinned, high-cheeked men on horseback, had swept out of Central Asia, conquering the world from Pekin to the gates of Berlin, to the last male member of the Gengizkhani clan, the princess' father, who had spent a life-time sidestepping the financial traps, the “concessions,” of these same Occidentals whom once his ancestors had subjugated and ruled with rope and flame and scimitar.

The ironic thought flashed through Hector's mind even as, from an inner chamber, came an answering call:

“Thank Allah!”

Then hysterical laughter; a man's acrid curse; a clanking of steel against steel—and Hector reached the chamber whence the cry had come, took in the scene at a glance—the girl, weakened, out of breath, but still pluckily defending herself against Abderrahman Yahiah Khan—and he was at him, the point of his weapon dancing before him like a lambent flame.

Up till this moment Abderrahman Yahiah Khan had been merely playing with the princess; had not wished to do her a bodily injury. Perhaps, now, suddenly, his love for her—for love it was, though rough, boisterous, cruel—turned into the primitive desire of primitive man that she, who could not be his, should never belong to anybody else, chiefly not to this upstart of a saheb who, according to Koom Khan's tale, had gained her love and was aspiring to the throne.

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 Perhaps, thus, for a passing moment, he made up his mind to kill her. Heretofore, he had not used his sword, had only defended himself with his metal-bossed arm shield.

Now he was about to draw …

But, by this time. Hector's weapon was approaching him in dancing, narrowing circles, while the princess, regaining her flagging strength, was about to thrust in and under his skillfully handled shield. He heard the ominous crackle of steel from both sides, both blades flickered toward his heart like messengers of death, the hilt of his own sword, when he tried to draw, caught in the folds of his voluminous waist shawl; and so, suddenly, but serenely, he did what most Asiatics would have done under the circumstances.

Fight the inevitable?

And what price was there in that, what pride, what logic? Was there price and pride and logic in one's own bleeding, mutilated corpse? Was there not far greater price and pride and logic in one's living body, though it be humbled through the stress of circumstance—of force majeure?

Why—outside, on the banks of the Ghulan River, the koil-birds were singing their throaty song of life and love; the little, green ceratrophys toads were sounding their basso notes; the very trees were alive with the breeze of spring, and the sky was blue and endless … Life, all around him!

Why then choose death?

Not he!

And so, skillfully, suddenly, just as the blades met

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 above his head, he ducked, sat down quickly on the ground, kowtowed, and remarked, without the slightest taint of shame or self-consciousness:

“It appears that I am vanquished. I am thy slave, Al Nakia—and thine, Aziza Nurmahal!”

With which he groped in his waist shawl, drew out a match and a sadly crumpled cigarette, lit it, and remarked, to nobody in particular, that even to the noblest of men  was always kismet, and that all came from Allah, the good as well as the evil.

“Thus—let us not cavil at the evil! It would be blasphemy unspeakable!”

Hector dropped the point of his sword. He laughed, frankly, loudly. He could not help himself. The governor's effrontery was too colossal.

Then, again, as he looked at the princess, as he saw the delicate splendor of her face, the warm golden tint of her skin, the magnificent curve of breast and hip for all her slimness, the long, narrow, pleasurable hands, and the huge eyes which shone like star-sapphires; as he saw her firm, red lips, those lips that held the eternal invitation of all womankind; together with a curious, rather impersonal kind of jealousy, since he did not love her, a great rage rose in his throat that the other should have thought of making her his.

And again he raised his sword, to the little princess' encouraging shouts of “Kill him, Al Nakia! Kill him!” while Abderrahman Yahiah Khan sighed resignedly, rather pathetically, with an expression in his eyes, his lips, the drooping of his shoulders which

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 seemed to say that Hector was taking an unfair ad vantage of him and that it was thus his right to feel hurt and abused.

For be it remembered that he was an Oriental; not the type of Eastern potentate one sees so much in England and occasionally in New York, flashing the motley silk of his turban through the gray, stony thoroughfares of the West, a man spoilt in a way yet bred to the most delicate finesse of feelings and manners and emotions; but that he, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, was an Oriental born and bred in the gutters of some reeking bazaar, who had lived the haphazard life of Eastern childhood with no lessons except those of his ancient race, the crooked, crowded streets, and once in a while a word of meaningless Koranic wisdom from the lips of some supercilious graybeard. When he had reached his twelfth year, manhood had come to him—sudden and a little cruel, as it comes to the children of Asia—and with it both the passions and the responsibilities of manhood. Hereafter he had had to make his own way—his own way compared to which that of a New York newsboy is a path of roses, since the West holds firm to that weakening philosophy called sympathy of which the East knows nothing and wants less—through the strength of his brain and his body, every step on the ladder of success marked by the blood and sufferings of some one weaker than himself, until to-day he was what he was—shrewd, but callous; a man whose enthusiasm was without warmth, whose brutality with out imagination, whose passion without delicacy, whose submission without shame.

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And, without shame, he looked up at Al Nakia, and, using the Oriental metaphor which corresponds to the plain English advice not to make a fool of himself, he said:

“Al Nakia—remember: 'He of great head becomes a king, he of great feet a shepherd!' What wouldst thou gain by killing me? Once I am dead, thy rage will be spent, and what profit then to thee, Heaven-Born? To kill means but a momentary revenge—and what gain is there in that?”

“The gain that I know thee to be dead—that never again thou wilt be able to make mischief!”

“Better far to grant me life—and to trust me!”

“Trust—thee?” Hector was utterly amazed.

“I am shrewd, Al Nakia.”

“Granted,” said Hector, curious what was to come next.

“I know this country, every inch of it, chiefly the western marches.”

“Thou dost, assuredly.”

“I have at my command my own troops, too, the men of Musa Al-Mutasim.”

“Precisely.”

“I have a large store of rifles and ammunition.”

“So I've heard.”

“Higgins saheb and the other saheb are at my headquarters.”

“Exactly!” rejoined Hector, who was getting impatient. “Thou art a traitor, and now thou art in my hands, as powerless as a trapped jackal, and …”

“Heaven-Born! Heaven-Born!” exclaimed the governor, shaking a finger as he might at a recalcitrant

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 child. “If I were powerful and swore fealty to thee, thou wouldst be right in not trusting me. For, powerful, I would strive for yet more power, would try to usurp thy place—as I did in the past. But, shorn of my power, in thy hands, under the heel of thy mercy, thus deprived of everything except what thou wouldst grant me, I should be forced to be loyal to thee through self-defense!”

“Look here,” began Hector who, in his honest British way, was more indignant at the man's Jesuitic casuistry of reasoning than at his treachery.

But the governor continued, very gently:

“Grant me life, Heaven-Born, and I shall pay for it a thousand times over. For I love life and what life brings.” Here he winked, shamelessly, at the princess who, Oriental to the marrow, was beginning to admire, even respect, the man's enormous, serene astuteness. “Grant me life, and then fortune will come to thy hand, unasked, like a courtezan—or a dog.”

And it was racially, culturally typical of Aziza Nurmahal that she, who at first had been more intent upon the man's instant death than Hector Wade, was also first to forget her hatred the moment she understood that he would be more valuable to her alive than dead—an instance of that Oriental immorality which, at times, turns out to be decidedly more constructive and humane than the case-hardened prejudices, virtues, and ethics of the moral-ridden Occident.

Seeing Hector hesitate, she took charge of the situation.

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“I grant thee life, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan,” she said. “Tell me. How wilt thou pay for it?”

“How?” smiled the governor, rising; and, hereafter, he disregarded Hector completely, and addressed himself directly to the princess. “Ahee! Thou art indeed of the blood of the Gengizkhani, twin sister to the gray-wolf, and thou wilt appreciate my shrewdness—and my loyalty!”

And he proceeded to sketch a naïvely brutal plan by the help of which he would, in payment for his life “and a few minor things of which I shall talk presently, when thy heart, O Aziza Nurmahal, is less bloated with evil and bitter thoughts against me,” change sides. He would turn over his military establishment, including Musa Al-Mutasim's choice gang of ruffians and the rifles and ammunition which Mr. Preserved Higgins had given him, to the Tamerlanistan government, surrender the Cockney and the other saheb:

“… to be severely dealt with as, by Allah, they deserve! And, henceforth, I shall become a law-abiding citizen and a stout pillar of the state. It will be easy. A word from me to my captains will be sufficient. As to Musa Al-Mutasim, it may be advisable to have his head cut off. Thus,” he added, piously, “shall we all be happy and contented and save much blood. And”—he smiled, vulpinely—“Higgins saheb and the other saheb and perhaps Musa Al-Mutasim will pay, and then everything will be as Allah willeth.”

“Good, good!” cried the princess, to whose eastern brain all this seemed supreme logic and wisdom; and

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 even Hector, while not admitting the logic, had to admit the wisdom, and though at first he had been shocked at the enormous, serenely unblushing unmorality of the project, he understood that after all it would be the right thing to accept it. He saw that, automatically, it would spell the end of all turmoil and once more bring back to Tamerlanistan its old peace and prosperity.

Therefore, when shortly afterwards a troop of Tamerlani soldiers and naibs drew rein at the mausoleum and invaded the place, sword in hand, threatening revenge against the treacherous governor of the western marches. Hector stepped between them and their intended victim, and asked them to take the man to the palace and to see that no harm came to him.

“No harm indeed!” echoed the governor to his twin brother and worst enemy, the governor of the eastern marches, who was amongst the crowd and had already raised his short, wicked sword. “Back to thy kennel, O dog, unbeautiful and decidedly objectionable, or I shall torture thee the torture of the boiling oil! For behold, O thou fetid hyena, I am in high favor with the princess and Al Nakia—because of my wisdom, my courage, my clean manliness, and my shining loyalty!”

And he strutted out with a considerable swagger, followed by the astonished Tamerlanis, while Hector Wade, laughing in spite of himself, turned quickly as he heard the princess' whispered words:

“The blades! The ancient blades! The blade of

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 the East and that of the West! Thy blade and mine, Al Nakia! The blades of the prophecy—which saved me—which saved Tamerlanistan

And then, realizing that here for the first time since he had come to Tamerlanistan he was alone with the princess without hidden eyes and ears watching and listening from behind the rustling zenana curtains, that here for the first time he had a chance to ask her straight out for a solution of the mystery. Hector demanded, rather bluntly:

“Tell me, Aziza. What is all this mad talk of blades and the wooing of blades? What is this ancient prophecy to which all the world seems to have the key except myself?”

She looked up, utterly astonished.

“Thou dost not know?”

“I have guessed, a little. But—well—I don't know.”

“Then why didst thou come here? Why didst thou sacrifice thy life, thy strength, thy energy, for this land, for me? If thou wert in love with me—which thou art not …”

“Which indeed I am not,” smiled Hector, “though I am thy friend.”

“And I thine. The best friend in the world—friend closer than a brother …”

“Rather!” said Hector to himself, thinking, bitterly, of his brother Tollemache, for whose sake he had taken on his shoulders the burden of dishonor; while the princess continued:

“Yes. We are friends. But—even so—why didst thou come here in the first place? What, if thou

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 knowest nothing of the prophecy of the swords, made thee leave thy own country? What made thee come to India, to the house in the Colootallah? And by what right hast thou this in thy possession?”—touching the sword which rode at his hip.

“By what right hast thou the sword of the Gengizkhani, the sword of my clan?” Her eyes flashed fire. Her narrow hands opened and shut spasmodically. Her voice rose to a minatory treble, with that sudden, killing, unreasonable burst of temper which is the heritage of Arab blood. “I—I am thy friend! But if that which is whispered in the western marches is true—if, indeed, thou art an impostor, and not Al Nakia, not the 'Expected One'—then I shall …”

Hector cut through her words with a sharp gesture. He smiled, rather ruefully, and assured her that he had come into possession of the blade honestly enough, that it had been amongst the heirlooms of his family, and that, ever since he could remember, it had had a curious influence over him …

“As if this bit of steel had a soul!” Easily, naturally, unself-consciously, he expressed in Persian the things which inhibition of race and training would have made impossible for him in English. “When I held the blade in my hand, even when I was a small boy, wings from the past, serene and gigantic and compelling, seemed to bear me toward an ancient destiny. It seemed as if the blade would cut through the tangled web of all my doubts and riddles and sorrows of life—would help me to recover something very precious which I had lost … something …”

He interrupted himself.

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“I am expressing myself crudely,” he said. “I can't tell what …”

“I understand!” Aziza Nurmahal slipped her hand into his. “Thou art the 'Expected One!' Tell me—everything!”

And he told her how, according to the traditions of the Wades of Dealle, he had been forced to shoulder the guilt of his older brother, had left his father's house taking nothing with him except the blade; and he went on until he came to the curious advertisement in the newspaper, the offer to buy swords at fair prices, and the even more curious figure of the old Oriental dealer in Coal Yard Street, off Drury Lane.

“What did this old Oriental look like?” she asked; and Hector described him as well as he could, adding that he bore a curious resemblance to the Tamerlani merchant in Calcutta at whose house he had first met her.

“Might have been his brother—they looked so much alike,” he wound up.

“Indeed!” laughed the princess. “For they are brothers. The man to whom you took the blade is Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, my father's most trusted friend, who went to the far places to …”

“To do what?”

“To hunt for the sword of the Gengizkhani. To find a descendant of that Englishman to whom once the sword was given, by my ancestor, centuries ago. To find thee, O Al Nakia, O Truly Expected One. To prove the truth of the old prophecy, when it appeared

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 Young children, especially, are always more easily led and ruled by example than by precept. If you give them a precept, it makes but little impression; if you point out that others are doing something, they imitate without being told to do so.

8. (iv) Again, nature is always showing us by examples that whatever is to be produced in abundance must be produced in some one place. Thus, for instance, wood is produced in quantities in forests, grass in fields, fish in lakes, and metals in the bowels of the earth.

Specialisation, too, is carried to such an extent, that the forest which produces pines, cedars, or oaks, produces them in abundance, although other kinds of trees may be unable to grow there; and, in the same way, land that produces gold does not produce other metals in like quantity. This truth can be seen much more plainly in our own bodies. It is very important that each limb share in the nourishment that is assimilated by the body. Its share, however, is not transmitted to each in its raw state, to be there digested and adapted; but there are certain fixed members, designed as workshops for the performance of this function, namely, to receive food for the use of the whole body, to heat it, to digest it, and, at length, to distribute nourishment to the other members. Thus, chyle is produced by the stomach, blood by the liver, vital spirit by the heart, and mental spirit by the brain and these elements, when prepared, are properly diffused throughout all the limbs and preserve life in the whole body. And therefore, as workshops supply manufactured goods, churches supply piety, and law courts justice, why should not schools produce, purify, and multiply the light of wisdom, and distribute it to the whole body of the human community?

9. (v) And, finally, we see the same tendency in the arts, if a rational procedure be used. When a tree cultivator, in his walks through woods and thickets, finds a sapling suitable for transplanting, he does not plant it in the same place where he finds it, but digs it out and places it in an orchard, where he cares for it in company with a hundred


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 that my father was on his death bed and the land would be left in my weak hands. To prove, too, that blood is thicker than the clogging dust of the centuries, and that Allah does not bring two human souls together in sport, to whirl them apart again as the sand storm whirls the yellow grains of the desert!

“The prophecy?” she went on. “The prophecy of the blades which thou dost not know in thy mind, but which thou knowest in thy soul? Listen! Thou, who earnest out of the West, heeding the silent call which drew thee to the East—thine own East! For cousin thou art to me. Thou, too, hast Gengizkhani blood in thy veins, the blood of the ancient, undying race, and thou showest it in this—and that—and this!” indicating his high cheek bones, his black, curly hair, his aquiline nose with the nervous, flaring nostrils which, according to Sussex tradition, had been the racial inheritance of some Spanish sailor shipwrecked on England's white cliffs in the days of the Armada and Good Queen Bess.

“Cousin to me!” she repeated, with a little lilt in her voice, like the lilt of an old, sweet song.

And she told him how her own people, the Gengizkhani, the descendants of Genghiz Khan the Great on the male and of the Prophet Mohammed on the female side, had once ruled all Central Asia, from the Outer Mongolian snows to the scorched plains of Rajputana, from Anatolia to Chinese Turkestan, from the painted gates of Moscow to the ragged basalt frontier of Siam and Amoy; how they had fought hard to conquer, harder yet to hold their

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 princely inheritance, and how amongst the many adventurers who left Europe for Asia in search of excitement and treasure, there had been a young Englishman.

He became an officer in the army of the Gengizkhani Ameer, whose name was Jaffar Sirajud-din, finally rising to the rank of captain-general, but there were bitter words when he fell in love with the Ameer's youngest daughter, Khadijah Sultana.

There was a fight, a duel; English blade against Tamerlani blade. The Ameer was vanquished and, prostrate on the ground, the point of the other's weapon flickering above his heart, he agreed to the marriage.

But, since Khadijah Sultana had been won in battle, instead of an exchange of rings, there was an exchange of swords.

Shortly after the birth of her little son, the princess died. The Englishman took the child, and returned to his native country; and the prophecy said that, before he left, he swore a most solemn oath to the Ameer that whenever a Gengizkhani needed the sword of his English cousins, the latter must obey the summons.

But, back here in the heart of Asia, in the course of the centuries, while they remembered the prophecy itself, the ancient prophecy which said that, in the Gengizkhani's hour of need, a man would come out of the West, in his hand the blade of Jaffar Sirajuddin, they had forgotten the name of the Englishman and his family. All they had to link them with the past was the Englishman's sword, the one with which

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 he had vanquished the Ameer and conquered his bride, with its escutcheon engraved on the hilt, and a description of the Gengizkhani sword which the foreigner had taken with him.

When Aziza Nurmahal's father was on his death-bed, Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, understood that there would be trouble with the Europeans begging and bribing and bullying for “concessions,” with none left of the old clan except a young girl unused to the intrigues of the palace, the mosques, and the bazaars, with the land sure to be torn by civil strife unless a strong man's hand took the helm of the ship of state.

Thus the Hajji had gone to the far places, to Europe, to England, on his mad search for the possessor of the Gengizkhani blade.

“And he found thee, Al Nakia!” the princess wound up.

“Yes! He found me! And I found him. I found—all that—yonder!”

He pointed to where, under the rays of the sun, the flat, white roofs of the capital poured to the dip of the river, while, farther east, a chain of hills rose in even tiers, sharp and terse, then softened marvelously until, in the farthest east, they curved inward like a bay of darkness, stretched out into a high table land, and soared into two cube-shaped granite hills which looked like the pillars of a gigantic gate.

The gate of this far Central Asian land which had called to him with the call of the blood!

The call of the ancient centuries, the mysterious, atavistic energy which, more even than the sword of

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 the Gengizkhani, had driven him across the world!

English out of Sussex he was. Yet this land, too, was his! This land—and its destinies!

Instinctively, he had taken the princess' hand. Now he dropped it, letting the softly clinging fingers slip from his own, as, clear through the other thoughts, cut a minor thought, disturbing, disconcerting.

“Why didn't the Hajji explain the prophecy to me?” he asked. “Why did he let me go—oh—blindfolded?”

The princess shook her head.

“I don't know, Al Nakia,” she replied. “But, doubtless, his reasons were good and wise. Whatever they were, they were just. For, always, has the lamp of his knowledge made clear the path from hearth stone to byre. And to-day—see!—the prophecy of my clan has been fulfilled, all but …” she smiled a little self-consciously, slurred and stopped.

Hector, too, smiled—a frankly boyish smile.

“Thou meanest that about the—wooing of the swords?”

“Yes.”

“Too bad,” he rejoined, uncompromisingly English for all his Persian phraseology. “Too bad that thy heart, Aziza Nurmahal, and mine are not hushed in the same sweet dream, that my heaven is not fulfilled in thy soul and body, nor thy heaven in mine.”

“Then,” asked the princess, just a little mischievously, “thou lovest—somebody else?”

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“Yes,” replied Hector, thinking of Jane.

“And so do I!” said the princess, thinking of the stranger who had stared at her, bold, unashamed, that day in the bazaar.

And they sighed and looked at each other, rather like two sentimental children, unhappy, yet, somehow, more pleased than otherwise at their own unhappiness, and left the mausoleum; and they returned through the streets of the town, acclaimed by peasant and noble, by merchant and priest, back to the palace whose turrets and domes burned under the rays of the late afternoon sun like the plumage of a gigantic peacock, in every mysterious blend of blue and green and purple.

As usual, the outer courtyard was a warren of teeming humanity and humanity's wives and children and mothers-in-law and visiting country cousins: saises and grass cutters, cooks and courtiers and mahajuns and paunchy assistants of Gulabian, villagers from the countryside come to present a petition or to call on friend and relative in the palace service, desert men who had brought the slim taxes of the farther lands, wealthy thakur sahebs, landed gentle men, in immaculate white and immense turbans, Babus fondly hugging huge account books bound in soft Bokhara leather, sellers of shawls and perfumes, of Persian brocade and gold-threaded Fyzabad muslin and all the many other things which are bought by the women of the harem; all talking, laughing excitedly … raising shrill voices of welcome as the princess, by Hector's side, passed through the gate,

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 with Gulabian's tall fur cap bobbing up and down as he made salaam after salaam, and the old nurse acting as a sort of impromptu choir leader.

“Alhamdulillah!” she cried. “Thou hast come back to us, O Aziza Nurmahal, O great soul of my little and worthless soul! Thou hast touched with the flame of thy return the lightless lamp of my sorrow!”

“And thou, O Al Nakia”—turning to Hector and clutching him in a bony embrace—“thou hast blown away the dead leaves that flitted in the wind of my grief! Thou art the sunshine that trickles through the patter of the gray rain. Thou …”

She turned and faced Babu Chandra, who was plucking at her sleeve:

“What is it, O he-goat?”

The Babu overlooked the insult and addressed himself direct to Hector, speaking in that chaos of murdered English slang that, since he was a Babu, was as dear to him as the crimson caste mark on his forehead.

“Saheb!” he said. “Regret to report that Warburton saheb had to leave in regular old whirlwind of a hurry.”

“That so?” asked Hector, who had forgotten all about the American.

“Yes. His daughter has been jolly well copped by no end of jolly, fat old ruffian—right-oh!” said Chandra, with the self-conscious pride and satisfaction peculiar to the bearers of bad tidings.

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 others. And thus also, the man who breeds fishes for the kitchen, digs fish-ponds and allows thousands to multiply together. In these cases the larger the orchard the better grow the trees, and the larger the fish-pond the larger grow the fish. And therefore, as fish-ponds are dug for fish and orchards are laid out for fruit-trees, so also should schools be erected for the young.


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Babu's tale was substantially the same which he had told Mr. Warburton and which had caused the latter to rush out of the audience hall and straddle the first horse he saw in the palace courtyard.

One of the tofanghees, the irregular soldiers, who had been left behind as a body-guard for Jane at the little village not far from the capital, had ridden into town with the news that the fat Afghan charpadar who, with his lean companion, had joined the caravan a day or two earlier, had returned to the village atop a swift dromedary. He had talked to Jane Warburton; then, suddenly, had dismounted, had picked her up and lifted her into the saddle, and, in spite of his immense bulk, had vaulted up behind her, using the dromedary's tail as a handle in true desert style, and had been off at a gallop.

Of course, the tofanghees had not been able to shoot, afraid they might hit the girl, but half-a-dozen of them had started in pursuit

Thus the Babu's tale, told with a beatific smile and a conscious stressing and straining of dramatic high spots, and, momentarily, Hector Wade came near to fainting. It seemed to him as if he were sinking into a cushion of air.

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His senses reeled as he pictured it all: the girl he loved—the rough Afghan charpadar who had kidnaped her—the …

No, no!

For a moment, subconsciously, as much out of pity and love for the girl as pity for himself, he tried to force the conviction on his mind that the reality could not be half as bad, as appalling, as dreadfully anguishing, as the fantastic terrors of his imagination. Later on, thinking of the experience, he would say that during that minute his heart was pierced with all the accumulated sufferings of humanity since first God and the Devil fought over the soul of Cain.

Jane—Jane Warburton—at the mercy of an Afghan charpadar, a lawless hillman who brooked no master except his own passion, his own greed, his own cruelty!

In the midst of all that eddying swirl of teeming, turbaned humanity who, sensing the tragedy, looked at him, some with sympathy, some with wonder, others, the majority, with frank curiosity, he felt utterly alone—racially alone, than which there is no worse loneliness in all the world.

A sharp pain tugged at his heart. His knees tottered. The low-dipping sun seemed to swing to and fro in a blazing brownish-yellow pendulum. A flood of red color with broad, interlacing veins floated before his eyes.

Again—and, being a strong man, physically, and unconsciously proud of the fact, he was ashamed even as he realized it—he came near to fainting; and then,

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 unmindful of the staring crowd, the princess put her slight arms about him.

“Al Nakia,” she whispered, “cousin mine—tell me! This foreign girl of whom the Babu spoke—is she …?”

Hector inclined his head without speaking. Dry eyed, vacant eyed, he stared at his feet.

“Cousin—cousin mine!”

Aziza Nurmahal did not say what she was going to say, perhaps did not know what she was going to say. She could not speak. Sympathy? To be sure, she felt sympathy with Hector. But she was too Oriental to attempt the impossible which a European would have tried: to grapple with another human's sentiments; to pronounce words of condolence or pity.

It would have seemed indelicate to her. For, in her psychology, grief and sorrow and pain were harsh things, lonely, cut-off things—invisible units of Fate which every man must bear alone, which no man can share; and typically Oriental, too, was she in her reactions, which were practically always mental, and not, as in a European, emotional.

Thus, when words finally came to her, they were soberly practical and constructive.

“The Babu spoke of two Afghans, one lean and the other fat. It is a wise thing to draw out the thorn in one's foot with the thorn in one's hand.”

“What dost thou mean?” asked Hector.

“That we have one of the—ah—'Afghans' here. The lean one, who turned out to be a Tamerlani, by the name of Abderrahman Yahiah Khan. Let us ask

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 him about his brother-rogue. Hey—Shikandar!” She turned to a servant. “Fetch me the governor of the western marches!”

Abderrahman Yahiah Khan came, listened, and took in the situation, including its ramified potentialities, at a glance.

Serenely overlooking the detail that, not long before, in the mausoleum, he had been willing and ready to sacrifice Musa Al-Mutasim's head on the altar of his own safety, he now felt hurt and indignant that the Arab, without consulting him, should have kidnaped Warburton saheb's daughter, with evidently not the slightest intention of letting him share in whatever ransom he might be able to extort.

His words, therefore, throbbed with bitterness as well as unfeigned, simon-pure moral shock.

“The fat—what didst thou say, Aziza Nurmahal—Afghan? Afghan indeed! He is an obese and indecent impostor! He is Musa Al-Mutasim, the renegade Arab who for years has made the western marches unsafe …”

“Which thou knowest well, O grandson of abundant filth!” cut in the old nurse, wagging a grimy, threatening thumb.

“Silence, Not-Wanted!” said the governor.

Then, turning to Hector and the princess, the crowd having dispersed at a gesture of the latter, he told them about the ancient Tartar castle named Jabul-i-Shuhada, “The Place of the Martyrs,” which belonged to the Arab and was his ever-ready place of refuge in case of dire need.

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“It is a stout place, easily defended, and can stand a long siege,” he went on. “Before Al-Mutasim and I left the western marches he had it put in readiness—originally for me and thee, Aziza Nurmahal, when I, being a foolish man and almost childlike in my impulsiveness …”

“Childlike? Thou? Childlike!” screamed Ayesha Zemzem. “By Zubalzan, son of Satan! I …”

“Childlike indeed, O Pig's Brain!” came the governor's ready repartee. “Childlike in thinking that I might be able to throw a noose around the far stars of desire and sweetness and beauty—that thou, Aziza, wouldst give me thy love and flood me with it, as the blessed rain floods the thirsty earth, and …”

“What about the Arab?” asked Hector, fretting. “Come on. What about him? And what about the Tartar castle?!”—he loosened the blade in its scabbard—“by God, I think that thou art delaying us on purpose with all this talk about …”

“Patience, son of a most impatient mother,” said Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, gently, “and remember that this same patience is the key of relief—is-subr miftah il-faraj, yah saheb! As to the castle, Musa Al-Mutasim is doubtless on his way there.”

“Where is it?” asked the princess.

“Ah—a sensible question—where is it? I know where it is, and I shall go there, myself, at the head of a squadron of troopers, and presently we will storm the castle—though it will take weeks—and, with my own hand, in sign of my loyalty, shall I cut that Arab dog's throat from his fat left ear to his fat right ear.”

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“And what will happen to the girl in the meantime?” demanded Hector.

“Nothing, saheb. See—Musa Al-Mutasim is not as I am”—he smiled, shamelessly, at the princess who, being perversely feminine and as perversely Oriental, liked him better with every word he spoke—“no! he is not as I am, full-blooded, a dallier with the words of love, a drawer of the sword of passion. Passion? By my beard! Gold is his passion—for he is a hoarder of coin, a swollen money bag, a cursed borrower of half-rupees! He only holds the girl for ransom!”

“But …”

“But”—continued the governor—“when he sees that there is no gold for him, but a dagger across his throat, he will pipe a different tune. Trust me, saheb, and do not worry. I know that obese son of a thousand devils!”

He walked away, snapping his fingers, well pleased with himself; and it was a proof of the man's eloquence, in a way of the man's greatness, that, for a moment, Hector was persuaded that the scheme was perfectly feasible, that, with the exception of certain unavoidable inconveniences, Jane Warburton was really safe, and it took the old nurse to see the flaw in the argument.

“Fool!” she shouted after Abderrahman Yahiah Khan's retreating back. “A blind fool, filling the lap of the morning wind with seventy times seventy bundles of empty vaporings! For”—she turned to Hector—“consider! Will Musa Al-Mutasim spare the girl when he sees that he is lost?”

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“Why …”

At once Hector understood, and he felt again that terrible sensation of faintness when, amidst the shouts of the servants that crowded the outer gate, three people entered the courtyard, and he saw, to his unspeakable joy and amazement, that it was Jane, accompanied by her father and by a gigantic figure of a man whom the old nurse, with a shrill scream, greeted as:

“Musa Al-Mutasim! By the red pig's bristles! Musa Al-Mutasim!”

Hector did not hear the last words. He heard nothing, saw nothing except Jane; and, forgetting the crowd that watched curiously from the gate, forgetting the princess, the nurse, the Arab, and Mr. Ezra Warburton, he rushed up to her and took her in his arms.

“My dear—oh, my dear …”

He stammered. English to the core he was, for all his strain of Tamerlani blood which bound his destiny with that of Asia, and English, too, was his love, lean, wiry, strong, a little hard. But, as he held her to him, close, the love he bore her swept over him with an overwhelming force and sweetness, and he did not have to use Cambuscan's Mirror to tell him that his love was returned.

She kissed him full on the lips.

Then she laughed.

“Hector,” she said, “I am surprised at you. This isn't the correct way to propose to a girl—nor exactly the correct place!”

“I don't care,” laughed Hector, “I'm never going

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 to be correct again as long as I live!”—and he kissed her, very much to the delight of the old nurse who, remembering a lover of her youth, a Rajput with split beard and hooded eyes and a sprig of jessamine behind his ear who had drifted across the Himalayas into Central Asia, broke into a high-pitched Indian love song:

And, in the exuberance of her emotion, she threw her bony arms around Mr. Warburtons neck and kissed him smackingly on the lips. The financier, embarrassed, indignant, would doubtless have been even more indignant had he been able to understand the words of her song, as she continued:

By this time Musa Al-Mutasim, who had enjoyed to the full the sensation which his arrival had caused, had salaamed before the princess with outstretched hands.

“I am in the shade of thy little white feet,” he said, with that rather grandiose and irresistible hypocrisy which is the Arab's birthright as much as passion and greed, “and my sword is thine and my manhood and my loyalty and my strength!”

Words which, given Musa Al-Mutasim's reputation

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 as a robber and murderer and border raider and all-round “bad man,” served only to increase the sensation his arrival had caused.

Even the princess, an Oriental herself, thus used to the, to a European forever inexplicable, but in reality quite logical, turns and twists of Asiatic reasoning, looked puzzled.

“Thy sword?” she demanded. “Thy loyalty and strength and manhood? And what then would I do with them, O thou great and shameless thief?”

“Behold!” said the Arab, with a magnificent gesture, “I give them all to thee!”

“Gidar rakhe mans ke thati”—Ayesha Zemzem cut in—“who would keep meat on trust with a jackal?”

“A wise man would,” retorted the robber.

“What? A wise man?”

“Indeed! After he has caused the jackal to be well fed—exceedingly well fed—as I am well fed!” and he produced a silk purse filled to the bursting point with gold.

He went on to explain that, on his way to the Tartar castle, his dromedary had tripped, fallen, broken a leg, and left him helpless in the desert not far from the village. The tofanghees who had ridden in pursuit had, in consequence, caught up with him, but had again been afraid to shoot.

“For,” he said, “I value life—life which is as uncertain as the trick of the peg to the hand of the unskilled horseman,, and so”—naïvely—“I used the foreign girl as a shield—a soft shield, a warm shield, but a strong shield!”

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“Wert thou not ashamed of thyself?” asked Aziza Nurmahal, to be met by the counter question:

“Wouldst thou be ashamed to drink when thou art thirsty? Wah!”

He shrugged his fat shoulders, and continued.

It appeared that, with the tofanghees afraid to shoot and himself unable to for the simple reason that he had no weapon except his short dagger, the situation had reached an impasse; and so they had sat there, in the desert, carefully watching each other, the Arab never for a moment releasing his bearlike hold on Jane Warburton, when, riding as he had never ridden before, Mr. Ezra Warburton had arrived on the scene.

He was a business man, first, last, and all the time. At times unreasonable, at other times irritable and nervous, he always emerged from his fits of temper or despondency to be frankly practical.

Thus, seeing his daughter in the Arab's arms, he had at first rushed forward—to be pulled back by one of the tofanghees, Mansoor Khan, who spoke a little English and warned him that his daughter's life was at stake.

Then he had hurled a flood of epithets at the other's head which, being in English, affected the Arab as much as a buzzing of flies.

Finally, his business instinct had come to the fore, and he had discovered that the robber, too, was at heart a business man. So, with the tofanghee playing interpreter, the two business men had arrived at an agreement, by the terms of which—“a simple matter

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 of trade,” the Arab called it—Mr. Warburton paid a thumping ransom for his daughter.

“He furthermore guaranteed,” Musa Al-Mutasim wound up, “that, if I surrendered to the Tamerlanistan authorities, my life would be safe.”

What the Arab did not explain was his reasoning for the latter resolve. He did not explain that, never before, had he realized that there was as much money in the world as Mr. Warburton was paying as ransom for his daughter, nor, if there were, that anybody should have as little sense as to pay it out. He had therefore considered Warburton what an American would have called an “easy mark,” and had proposed to stick to him, through thick and thin, as a financial prospect far more promising and much less dangerous than border brigandage.

There was of course his former companion in crime, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan; but, very much as the latter had been ready to sacrifice him during the interview with Hector in the mausoleum, so he was willing to sacrifice the governor for his own advantage. In the Orient, at least, it is not true that there is honor amongst thieves—nor, perhaps, in the Occident.

“Aziza Nurmahal,” he said; and to Hector, the words sounded suspiciously like those which the governor of the western marches had used, “I have been bad and wicked. Now I have reformed. Command me—”

“To do what?” asked the princess.

“To bring peace to the western marches that—alas!—

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 too long have been torn by strife and turmoil and”—he said it quite naïvely—“the plundering of the caravans. Say the word, and I myself shall see to it that the armed men under my command join thy service. As to Higgins saheb and the other saheb, the easiest way would be to kill them. For a dead horse does not eat grass, and a dead saheb does not ask for 'concessions.'”

“What about Abderrahman Yahiah Khan?” demanded Hector, with a twinkle in his eye.

“He is a scoundrel,” said the Arab. “He is in league with Musboot, the lord of lies and fleas. It is he who led me astray from the right path—the path of virtue—I swear it by my mother's honor! He is …”

Quite suddenly, he was silent. His jaws dropped, and, perhaps for the first time in his life, he blushed.

For there in the crowd stood Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, a smile curling his thin lips—a smile that presently changed into a laugh.

The Arab, too, laughed.

“Ho, brother!” he shouted. “Ho, soul of my soul!”—and, without any more ado, they fell in each other's arms.

It was Babu Chandra who, talking to Gulabian that night, put it all in a nutshell.

“If the man be ugly,” he said, “what can the mirror do? If a man be a liar, how can we expect truth from him? But even an ugly man has his uses. Even a liar has his uses. I myself,” he added, unblushingly, “have been known to lie at times.”

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text: Page:Science and medieval thought. The Harveian oration delivered before the Royal College of Physicians, October 18, 1900 (IA sciencemedievalt00allbrich).pdf/4


text: Black Star Comes Back

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text: Talk:Black Star Comes Back

title: Talk:Black Star Comes Back