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Iskender moved on, trusting hard in Allah to save his Sunday clothes from base defilement. The priest Mîtri, seated in the shade, was playing an innocent game with two pebbles, which he threw into the air and caught alternately, when Iskender, approaching humbly, wished him a happy day.
Here they traversed a mud-village plumed with palms, its narrow ways alive with dogs, and fowls, and children, where Iskender shouted, "Way for the Emîr!" till men and women bowed their heads and praised him; there an olive-grove profuse of dappled shade, where they were content to let their horses walk at ease.
After that Iskender went to the priest's house every evening, and his mother often stole so far to meet him, hurrying, chin on shoulder, in evident terror of pursuit by the missionaries. She endured all Mîtri's reprobations with a shrug, content so long as he allowed her to embrace her boy. "Poor people must eat bread.
He treated Iskender with a kind of worship as the repository of that precious secret, showed great care for his health, and was in all things his loyal helper. But the young man did not trust him. He kept the details of the expedition to himself as organiser; and, though Elias pestered him with questions concerning the whereabouts of that desirable valley, he would reveal nothing.
They have complained against thee to the consul." Iskender begged for food, which she could not refuse, though she produced it unwillingly, and stood over him while he ate, adjuring him, for the love of Allah, to make haste. "O my terror, my despair!" she wailed. "All the slaves of power are out in search of thee. They have been here already, threatening me with torture.
The vale in which lay scattered all the treasure of the ancient kings. So that was what his Honour came to seek! Iskender was no less perplexed than was his lord by all this outcry, when the chief of all the tribe leaned towards him, saying: "I understand. He seeks the Valley of the Kings," and touched his forehead meaningly. "May Allah heal him!
At a loss, he changed his tone, but not the subject, giving his patron the true history of his difference with the missionaries, which arose from his boyish passion for the Sitt Hilda. "Is that the young one? Not a bad-looking girl, if she dressed properly!" threw in the Emîr; and again Iskender was at a loss, for he could not conceive how dress could do otherwise than hide a woman's beauty.
His dark face brightened wonderfully when he heard what the priest required of him. He seized his staff and called out all the neighbours, who burst out laughing when they learned the nature of his business. When Iskender joined them, however, there were looks askance; one said to another, "Is not this the Brûtestânt, the son of Yâcûb? What hand has he in this affair?
It was a catastrophe hardly less than that of the gold. Even in love the fierce, unreasoning passion of a youth for a maid it seemed a Frank must differ from a son of the Arabs. Once more Iskender had erred in attributing to the Emîr his own sensations, and been punished for it as for an offence unthinkable. Once more he gazed into a soundless gulf, impossible to bridge; and was appalled.
Through a deserted alley, down first one dark, stinking passage, then another, Iskender reached a crazy door and, knocking on it twice, was told to enter. The room within was small and very dark. It had only one window, high up in the wall, and even that looked out upon a covered way.
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