depart,” she directed her attendant; and, turning to me: “Wait in the outer room. Thy presence is loathsome to me, O mother of calamities.”

“I hear and obey,” I replied, “O pomegranate blossom”—and, following the direction of her rigidly extended finger, I shuffled back to the little octagonal apartment and the masked door was slammed almost upon my heels.

This room, which possessed no windows, was solely illuminated by a silken-shaded lantern, but I had not long to wait in that weird half-light ere my conductress, again closely muffled in her shawls, opened the door at the head of the steps and signed to me to descend.

“Lead the way, my beautiful daughter,” I said; for I had no intention of submitting myself to the risk of a dagger in the back.

She consented without demur, which served to allay my suspicions somewhat, and in silence we went down the uncarpeted stairs and out into the trellis-covered walk. The shadow beneath the high wall had deepened and widened since we had last skirted the gardens, and I felt my way along with my hand cautiously outstretched.

26

At a point within sight of the flower-grown arbor beneath which I knew the gate to be concealed, my guide halted.

“I must return, mother,” she said quickly. “There is the gate, and Mahmûd will open it for you.”

“Farewell, O daughter of the willow branch,” I replied. “May Allah, the Great, the Compassionate, be with thee, and may thou marry a prince of Persia.”

Light of foot she sped away, and, my forebodings coming to a sudden climax, I crept forward with excessive caution, holding my clenched hand immediately in front of my face—a device which experience of the hospitable manners of the East had taught me.

It was well that I did so. Within three spaces of the gate a noose fell accurately over my head and was drawn tight with a strangling jerk!

But that it also encircled my upraised arm, its clasp must have terminated my worldly affairs.

My assailant had sprung upon me from behind; and, in the fleeting instant between the fall of the noose and its tightening, I turned about ... and thrust the nose of my Colt repeater (which I grasped in that protective upraised hand) fully into the grinning mouth of the negro gate-keeper!

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