bowed it out of all manhood.

"May grass spring under thy footstep, Saadat," he said, in a thick voice,
and salaamed awkwardly--he had been so long absent from life's
formularies.

"What dost thou here, pasha?" asked David formally. "Thy sentence had
no limit."

"I could not die there," said the hollow voice, and the head sank farther
forward. "Year after year I lived there, but I could not die among them.
I was no leper; I am no leper. My penalty was my penalty, and I paid
it to the full, piastre by piastre of my body and my mind. It was not
one death, it was death every hour, every day I stayed. I had no mind.
I could not think. Mummy-cloths were round my brain; but the fire burned
underneath and would not die. There was the desert, but my limbs were
like rushes. I had no will, and I could not flee. I was chained to the
evil place. If I stayed it was death, if I went it was death."

"Thou art armed now," said David suggestively. Achmet laid a hand
fiercely upon a dagger under his robe. "I hid it. I was afraid. I
could not die--my hand was like a withered leaf; it could not strike; my
heart poured out like water. Once I struck a leper, that he might strike
and kill me; but he lay upon the ground and wept, for all his anger,
which had been great, died in him at last. There was none other given to
anger there. The leper has neither anger, nor mirth, nor violence, nor
peace. It is all the black silent shame--and I was no leper."

"Why didst thou come? What is there but death for thee here, or anywhere
thou goest! Kaid's arm will find thee; a thousand hands wait to strike