cartridge belt in the Circassian manner, from right shoulder to left hip;” which was a remarkably faithful description, chiefly considering that she had only seen him in the fleeting fraction of a second!
And when the next day Zaida reported that the stranger had left town to return to his own country, and that in spite of all warnings he had taken the western highway which was infested with the robbers of Abderrahman Yahiah Khan and “The Basin,” Aziza Nurmahal's heart felt heavy within her, and her fingers wandered aimlessly over the strings of her rubabah, her Persian guitar.
The stranger, meanwhile, was spurring his Balkh stallion up the western highway, beneath the purple depths of the night sky where hung tiny points of light that glittered and glistened with the cold gleam of diamonds.
“That Babu factotum of Mr. Preserved Higgins knows a jolly lot about Tamerlanistan,” he said to himself, whimsically, “but he does not know the most important thing. He does not know that the little princess has the blackest eyes in all the world. The wooing of swords? The fulfilling of the old prophecy? All right—'Barkis is willin’'—now more than ever!”
And he kept on toward the west, where a faint, silver gray mountain was flung like a cloud against the sky. All night he rode, and through the soft spring morning that dropped over the land with a brocaded mantle of rose and gold, down the Darb-i-Sultani that was flanked by huge piles of bare rock, standing detached upon the surface of sand and clay …
