by her mistress, and was now squatting in a corner of the pavilion, puffing noisily at a large, soothing hubble-bubble; and the princess dismissed her servants, turned to Hector, and told him what had happened in Tamerlanistan—what had sent the old nurse hurrying across desert and mountains.
It appeared that Wahab al-Shaitan, the negro executioner who, with the title of Rawan-i-Sultana, “Killer for the Queen,” was regent during her absence, had done well, comparatively speaking. He had ruled with an iron hand and, at first, everybody had obeyed him.
Then, several weeks earlier, a spy had brought the news that Abderrahman Yahiah Khan, governor of the western marches, had again commenced intriguing with the Persian border ruffians whom he was supposed to keep in subjection. They were led by one Hajji Musa Al-Mutasim, a renegade Mecca Arab who had drifted east into Persia and was known, and unfavorably known, by the nickname of Al-Ghadir, “The Basin,” because of his enormous appetite and corresponding bulk, which latter did not prevent him, followed by his wild borderers, from being a genius at frontier warfare. He was here to-day and there to morrow, dancing out of the bush, striking swiftly and mercilessly, and always at the very place where he was not supposed to be; and when the villagers could not pay the tribute which he demanded, he gave their huts to the flames and carried off their women and children and cattle.
Too, he and his band were levying toll on the caravans that passed through the Darb-i~Sultani, “The
