her travels. His
home is in that region, and he is convinced that she has indeed seen
the places she describes. Also, she carries ever in her breast a small
sprig of fadeless sea-lavender that groweth only on the Black Mountain
slopes, and sayeth that the sea captain plucked it as he set her
ashore, telling her that it was even as her courage, seeing that it
would never fade.'

But the Sultan's patience was exhausted: 'I must see this woman and
judge for myself, not merely hear of her from aged lips,' he
exclaimed. 'Witch or woman--moonbeam or maiden--she shall declare
herself in my presence. Only, since she doth dare to call herself the
messenger of the Most High God, let her be accorded the honours of an
Ambassador, that all men may know that the Sultan duly regardeth the
message of Allah.'

II

On a divan of silken cushions in the guest chamber of a house in the
city of Adrianople, a woman lay, still and straight. Midnight was long
past. Outside, the hot wind could be heard every now and then,
listlessly flapping the carved wooden lattice-work shutters of an
overhanging balcony built out on timber props over the river Maritza,
whose turbid waters surged beneath with steady plash. Inside, the
striped silken curtains were closely drawn. The atmosphere was stuffy
and airless, filled with languorous aromatic spices.

Mary Fisher could not sleep: she lay motionless as the slow hours
passed; gazing into the darkness with wide, unseeing eyes, while she
thought of all that the coming day would bring. The end of her
incredible journey was at hand. The Grand Vizier's word was pledged.
The Grand Turk himself would grant her an audience before the hour of
noon, to receive her Message from the Great King.

Her Message. Through all the difficulties and dangers of her journey,
that Message had sustained her. As she had tramped over steep mountain
ranges, or won a perilous footing in the water-courses of dry hillside
torrents, more like staircases than roads, thoughts and words had
often rushed unbidden to her mind and even to her lips. No
difficulties could daunt her with that Message still undelivered. Many
an evening as she lay down beneath the gnarled trees of an olive
grove, or cooled her aching feet in the waters of some clear stream,
far beyond any bodily refreshment the intense peace of the Message she
was sent to deliver had quieted the heart of the weary messenger. Only
now that her goal was almost reached, all po