gs beneath him, propped him up in front of the pasha.

"Sikham," said Ali to the dervish, "I feel the approach of evil days.
My sword rusted in its sheath in a single night. My buckler, which I
covered with gold, has cracked from end to end. A severed head, which
hid itself away from me so that I could not find it, came forth to me
at night and spoke to me of my death; and in my dreams I see my sons
make free with the Prophet. I ask thee not what all these things
signify. That I know. Just as surely as in winter-time the hosts of
rooks and crows resort to the roofs of the mosques, so surely shall
my sworn enemies fall upon me. I am old compared with them, and it is
a thing unheard of among the Osmanlis that a man should reach the age
of nine and seventy and still be rich and mighty. Let them come! But
one thing I would know--who will be the first to attack me? Tell me
his name."

The dervish thereupon caused a wooden board to be placed before him on
which meats were wont to be carried; then he put upon it an empty
glass goblet, and across the glass he laid a thin bamboo cane. Next he
wrote upon the wooden board the twenty-nine letters of the Turkish
alphabet, and then, thrice prostrating himself to the ground with
wide-extended arms, he fixed his eyes steadily upon the centre of the
goblet.

In about half an hour the goblet began to tinkle as if some one were
rubbing his wet finger along its rim. This tinkling grew stronger and
stronger, louder and louder, till at last the goblet moved up and down
on the wooden board, and began revolving along with the light cane
placed across it, revolving at last so rapidly that it was impossible
to discern the cane upon it at all.

Then, quite suddenly, the dervish raised his fingers from the table,
and the goblet immediately stopped. The point of the cane stood
opposite the letter _ghain_--G.[7]

[Footnote 7: The marvels of our modern table-turning and table-tapping
spirits, and all the wonders of this sort, were known to the Arab
dervishes long ago.--JOKAI.]

"That signifies the first letter of his name," said the dervish--"G!"

And then the mysterious operation was repeated, and the magic stick
spelled out the name letter by letter: "G--a--s--k--h--o B--e--y." At
the last letter the goblet stopped short and would move no more.

"I know no man of that name," said Ali, amazed that he whose name was
so world-renowned was to tremble before one whose name he had never
heard b