How can I serve him?"

"By executing the present order, sent you by the Divan, desiring you to
behead a traitor, named Pacho Bey, who crept into your service a short
time ago."

"Willingly! but he is not an easy man to seize being brave, vigorous,
clever, and cunning. Craft will be necessary in this case. He may appear
at any moment, and it is advisable that he should not see you. Let
no one suspect who you are, but go to Drama, which is only two hours
distant, and await me there. I shall return this evening, and you can
consider your errand as accomplished."

The kapidgi-bachi made a sign of comprehension, and directed his course
towards Drama; while Ismail, fearing that the Nazir, who had only
known him a short time, would sacrifice him with the usual Turkish
indifference, fled in the opposite direction. At the end of an hour he
encountered a Bulgarian monk, with whom he exchanged clothes--a disguise
which enabled him to traverse Upper Macedonia in safety. Arriving at the
great Servian convent in the mountains whence the Axius takes its rise,
he obtained admission under an assumed name. But feeling sure of the
discretion of the monks, after a few days he explained his situation to
them.

Ali, learning the ill-success of his latest stratagem, accused the Nazir
of conniving at Pacho Bey's escape. But the latter easily justified
himself with the Divan by giving precise information of what had really
occurred. This was what Ali wanted, who profited thereby in having the
fugitive's track followed up, and soon got wind of his retreat. As Pacho
Bey's innocence had been proved in the explanations given to the Porte,
the death firman obtained against him became useless, and Ali affected
to abandon him to his fate, in order the better to conceal the new plot
he was conceiving against him.

Athanasius Vaya, chief assassin of the Kardikiotes, to whom Ali imparted
his present plan for the destruction of Ismail, begged for the honour
of putting it into execution, swearing that this time Ismail should not
escape. The master and the instrument disguised their scheme under the
appearance of a quarrel, which astonished the whole town. At the end of
a terrible scene which took place in public, Ali drove the confidant of
his crimes from the palace, overwhelming him with insults, and declaring
that were Athanasius not the son of his children's foster-mother,
he would have sent him to the gibbet. He enforced his words by the
applicat