THE KING'S WAY
seeming to leave his bedside. At once he said, "You noticed that, did you?" I replied that I had been very much struck by her care of him. "I was blind," he said; "I do not know what happened, but I am very glad you remarked how carefully Sarefa nursed me, and that you have mentioned it, for now you will recognise that she ought to have an allowance."
In the presence of the lady, even though she did not raise her eyes from the floor, it was difficult not to recognise that, if curses come home to roost, blessings sometimes go astray.
After a respite of eighteen months, the evil spirit again took possession of the King, and this time made short work of him.
The scientific explanation, deriding the evil-spirit theory, said that a tumour on the brain, caused by no matter what, accounted for the first attack, and that as sometimes, but rarely, happens, the growth was for a time arrested, the tumour contracted, and the pressure on the brain was removed. But the mischief was there, and a sudden rapid development of the disease brought on a return of the symptoms, a violent but hopeless struggle, and death.
It is the custom in the country of which I now write to, in a manner, canonise its Sultans. At the
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