s of the False Prophet, was impossible, not to be contemplated
for an instant. With the gentleness of complete decision she dismissed
the slave girl, who departed reluctantly towards the women's
apartments. In spite of the froth of shining, billowy folds with which
her arms were full, she turned round as she parted the striped, silken
hangings of the doorway and drew her dusky orange finger-tips in a
significant gesture across her slender brown throat. It was obvious
that the slave girl considered this refusal a very serious breach of
etiquette indeed!

Left alone, Mary Fisher clothed herself, proudly and yet humbly, in
her own simple garments. Her body bore even yet the marks where cruel
scourgings in her youth had furrowed deep scars from head to waist.
Years ago thus had English Christians received her, when she and her
companion had been whipped until the blood ran down their backs
beneath the market cross at Cambridge. The two young girls were the
first of any of the Friends to be thus publicly scourged. 'This is but
the beginning of the sufferings of the people of God,' Mary had
exclaimed prophetically, as the first stroke of the lash fell on her
shoulders, while the assembled multitudes listened in amazement as the
two suffering women went on to pray for mercy on their persecutors.

While here, in Adrianople, under the Crescent, the Infidel Turk, to
whom she had come in the power of the very same Message for which she
had suffered in Christian countries, was receiving her with kindness
and respect, offering to clothe her body in sumptuous apparel, instead
of with bloody scars....

Mary Fisher sighed with irrepressible pain at the thought. Looking
down, the marks left by the stocks were also plainly visible under the
sunburn round her ankles, as she stood, bare-footed, on the crimson
rug. She gladly covered up those tell-tale tokens under her white
stockings. But where were her shoes? They seemed to have disappeared.
Although the few strips of worn leather that she had put off the night
before had been scarcely worthy of the name of shoes, their
disappearance might be a grave difficulty. Had they been taken away in
order to force her to appear bare-footed before the Sultan?

Ah!--here the slave girl was reappearing. Kneeling down, with a
triumphant smile she forced the Englishwoman's small, delicate
feet--hardened, it is true, by many hundreds of miles of rough
travelling, but shapely still--into a little pair