hat Kara Makan
appeared before the Sultan.

The Padishah was sitting on the ground--on the bare ground. His royal
robes were still upon him, a diamond aigrette sparkled in the turban
of the Caliph, and there he sat upon the ground, and never took his
eyes off it.

"Your majesty!" cried Kara Makan, addressing him.

The Padishah, as if he had not heard, looked apathetically in front of
him, and not a muscle of his face changed.

"Sire, I stand before thee to speak to thee in the name of the Moslem
people."

He might just as well have been speaking to a marble statue.

"Every storm proceeds from Allah, sire, and nothing which Allah does
is done without cause. When the lightnings are scattered abroad from
the hands of the angel Adramelech, is not the air beneath them heavy
with curses? and when the living earth quakes beneath the towns that
are upon it, shall not innocently spilled blood shake it still more?
So also the Moslem people rising in rebellion is the instrument of
Allah, and Allah knoweth the causes thereof. I will guard my tongue
against telling these causes to thee; thou knowest them right well
already, nor is it for me to reprove the anointed successor of the
Prophet. But I beg thee, sire, to promise me and the people, in the
name of Allah, that thou wilt do what it beseemeth the ruler of the
Ottoman nation to do--promise to remedy our wrongs, and we will set
thee again upon thy throne."

At these words Mahmoud fixed his eyes upon the speaker, and gazed long
upon those dark features, as sinister as an eclipse of the sun. Then
he arose, turned away, and replied in a low voice, hissing with
contempt:

"The Sultan owes no reply to his servants."

Kara Makan's face was convulsed at these words. Scarce was he able to
stifle his wrath, and he replied, in broken sentences:

"Sire, the lion is the king of the desert--but if he is in a cage--he
listens to the voice of his keeper--thou knowest this hand, which hath
fought for thee in many engagements--and thou knowest that whatever
this hand seizeth it seizeth with a grasp of iron."

The Sultan pondered long. Then all at once he seemed to bethink him of
something, for his face seemed to lose its severity, and he turned
towards the Janissary leader with a mild, indulgent look.

"What, then, dost thou require?" This softened look concealed the
genesis of the thought--the Janissaries must be wiped off the face of
the earth. "What dost thou require?" said the