ging to the mosque. The rumor was then set on foot that it
was unlawful to look steadily into the waters of the Bosphorus or to
attempt the salvage of any derelict body floating by.

The prince made another assault on his hair and tightened his fingers,
this time with a movement as if he was twisting them round somebody's
throat, but he made no outcry. It is hard to kick against the pricks in
some lands.

He did not believe the bow-string pillow-case and solid-shot story, but
he knew that he should never look upon her face again. What he did
believe was that she had been taken to some distant city and there sold.

For days he shut himself up in his palace. Then, having overheard a
conversation in his garden between two eunuchs--placed there for that
purpose--he got together a few belongings, took his faithful caique-ji,
and travelled a-field. If what he had heard was true she was in or near
Damascus. Here would he go. If, after searching every nook and cranny,
he failed to find her, he would return and carry out his sovereign's
commands and marry the princess--a woman he had never laid his eyes on
and who might be as ugly as sin and as misshapen as Yuleima was
beautiful. It was while engaged in this fruitless search that he met
Joseph, to whom he had poured out his heart (so Joe assured me, with
his hand on his shirt-front), hoping to enlist his sympathies and thus
gain his assistance.

All this time the heartbroken girl, rudely awakened from her dream of
bliss, was a prisoner in the deserted house next the mosque. As the
dreary months went by her skin regained its pinkness and her beautiful
hair its golden tint,--walnut shells and cosmetics not being found in
the private toilet of the priests and their companions. When the summer
came a greater privilege was given her. She could never speak to any
one and no one could speak to her--even the priests knew this--but a
gate opening into the high-walled garden was left unlocked now and then
by one of the kind-hearted Mohammedans, and often she would wander as
far as the end of the wall overlooking the Mosque of Suleiman, her
attendant always with her--a black woman appointed by Chief-of-Police
Selim, and responsible for her safety, and who would pay forfeit with
her head if Yuleima escaped.

"And you think now, effendi," concluded Joe, as he drained his last cup
of coffee (Hornstog's limit was twenty cups at intervals of three
minutes each), "that Joe be big damn fool