God.

"Do not try to see Him," Abu Hamid al-Din Saadi had told him. "If you
see Him in your mind, you are looking at an idol."

Daoud did not try to see God, but as he prayed, a Muslim all alone in
the heart of Christendom, he could not help but see Sheikh Saadi, the
Sufi master who had brought him to Islam.

* * * * *

The face was very dark, the rich black of a cup of kaviyeh. Out of the
blackness peered eyes that _saw_--saw into the very souls of his
students.

Often as he sat listening to Sheikh Saadi read from the Koran, the Book
to be Read, and explain its meaning, voices from the past reproached
him. The voice of Father Adrian, the chaplain of their castle, rang in
his mind. The quiet voice of his mother, teaching him the Lord's Prayer
and the Hail Mary, whispered to him. Like thunder his father spoke of
war and of what it was to be a knight.

He could escape the torment of these voices only by listening closely to
the Sufi sheikh. Saadi was trying to teach him how to be good, and that
was the same thing his mother and father had wanted for him. So they
would not mind if he learned from Saadi.

Sheikh Saadi, wearing the white woolen robe of a Sufi, sat on a
many-colored carpet of Mosul, an open copy of the Koran resting on an
ornately carved lectern before him. His hand, as dark as the mahogany of
the stand, caressed the page as he read aloud.

"'Such as persevere in seeking their Lord's countenance and are regular
in prayer and spend of that which We bestow upon them secretly and
openly, and overcome evil with good: Theirs will be the Heavenly Home.'"

_Mohammedan dogs!_ Daoud remembered Father Adrian in his black and white
robes shouting in the chapel at Chateau Langmuir. _Satan is the author
of that vile book they call the Koran._

By the age of eleven Daoud had already known cruelty and evil at the
hands of the Turks who had captured him, kindness with Baibars, and
goodness with Sheikh Saadi. The Sufi sheikh had never made any claim,
but Daoud had no doubt that he often walked and talked with God.

"Secretly and openly are we to give," the old man was saying. "God has
been generous to us, and we must be generous in turn. When you are kind
to a bird or a donkey, or even to an unclean animal like a pig or a dog,
He loves you for it. He loves you more when you are kind to a slave or
to a woman or to one of the unfortunate, like a cripple or an
unbeliever."

"Daoud i