"The monk who passed thee but now goes every year to the Place of Lepers
with the caravan, for a brother of this order stays yonder with the
afflicted, seeing no more the faces of this world which he has left
behind. Afar off from each other they stand--as far as eye can see--and
after the manner of their faith they pray to Allah, and he who has just
left us finds a paper fastened with a stone upon the sand at a certain
place where he waits. He touches it not, but reads it as it lies, and,
having read, heaps sand upon it. And the message which the paper gives
is for me."

"For thee? Hast thou there one who--"

"There was one, my father's son, though we were of different mothers; and
in other days, so many years ago, he did great wrong to me, and not to me
alone,"--the grey head bowed in sorrow--"but to one dearer to me than
life. I hated him, and would have slain him, but the mind of Allah is
not the mind of man; and he escaped me. Then he was stricken with
leprosy, and was carried to the place from whence no leper returns. At
first my heart rejoiced; then, at last, I forgave him, Saadat--was he not
my father's son, and was the woman not gone to the bosom of Allah, where
is peace? So I forgave and sorrowed for him--who shall say what miseries
are those which, minute to minute, day after day, and year upon year,
repeat themselves, till it is an endless flaying of the body and burning
of the soul! Every year I send a message to him, and every year now this
Christian monk--there is no Sheikh-el-Islam yonder--brings back the
written message which he finds in the sand."

"And thee has had a message to-night?"