Omar would be powerful enough to seize the royal
sceptre, and who would be senseless enough to desire it?"

"Look at me."

"I am looking. The sun does not soil itself by shining upon a swamp,
and therefore I may look even at thee; but I see nothing in thee that
would justify the adorning of thy head with a diadem so long as one
of the descendants of Sulaiman the Magnificent is alive."

"Another word and thou shalt cease to live!" cried the desperado,
haughtily throwing back his head before the Sultan. "Art thou aware
that thy son Abdul Mejid is in our hands?"

The Sultan shuddered. His consternation at these words was written in
every feature.

"My son, Abdul Mejid? Impossible!"

"So it is. The Sultana Valideh gave him up at our request."

"Oh, madness!" exclaimed the Sultan; and he began pacing to and fro.

Abdul Mejid was still a mere child. The shock of such a rebellion
might easily make an epileptic of him. To deliver him into the hands
of these rebels was as good as to sign his death-warrant. Even if they
did not kill him outright, his nerves might suffer from their
violence, and he might perish, as the two and twenty other children of
Sultan Mahmoud had perished, every one of whom had died of epilepsy.
Their delicate nervous constitutions had been shattered in their youth
under the influence of that perpetual terror to which the children of
the Caliph of caliphs had been exposed from time immemorial. What,
then, might not happen to Abdul Mejid if he fell into the hands of
this savage mob?

"Oh, ye are hell's own children! Ye are worse than the Giaours, worse
than the Greeks, worse than the Muscovites! Ye do place your feet on
the heads of your rulers!"

The despair of the Sultan emboldened the Janissary still further.

"Sign this document, or thy son shall die in our hands!"

"Miserable cowards!" moaned the Sultan. "And cowards they also who
should have defended him! Did not even his mother defend him? Was it
necessary to give him up?"

"He is in no danger," said Kara Makan; "nay, he is in a safe place. It
rests with thee to receive him back into thy arms;" and he shoved
towards him again the soiled and crumpled manuscript.

The Padishah, overcome by the shock of his own feelings, humiliated by
the sense of his own soft-heartedness, tottered to the wall, and when
his groping hands came in contact with the cold marble he collapsed
altogether, and leaning against it, he pressed his burning temples