gazing at the floor, shaking her pretty head again and again as though
something unheard-of and incredible had befallen her.

At last, with a bitter sigh, she went to bed; and while she vainly strove
for sleep, and for strength to pray and be silently resigned, Time seemed
to her a wild-beast chase, Fate a relentless hunter, and the quarry he
was pursuing was herself.




CHAPTER IV.

On the following evening Haschim, the merchant, came to the governor's
house with a small part of his caravan. A stranger might have taken the
mansion for the home of a wealthy country-gentleman rather than the
official residence of a high official; for at this hour, after sunset,
large herds of beasts and sheep were being driven into the vast court-
yard behind the house, surrounded on three sides by out-buildings; half a
hundred horses of choice breed came, tied in couples, from the watering-
place; and in a well-sanded paddock enclosed by hurdles, slaves, brown
and black, were bringing fodder to a large troop of camels.

The house itself was well-fitted by its unusually palatial size and
antique splendor to be the residence of the emperor's viceroy, and the
Mukaukas, to whom it all belonged, had in fact held the office for a long
time. After the conquest of the country by the Arabs they had left him
in possession, and at the present date he managed the affairs of his
Egyptian fellow-countrymen, no more in the name of the emperor at
Byzantium, but under the authority of the Khaliff at Medina and his great