missionaries, as they were sure to do,
it would ruin his mother in their eyes for ever.

"Take no thought for him, O Abdullah!" she cried furiously. "He is no
son of mine, but a changeling of the children of the Jann. Doubtless
my true son, whom I loved and nursed, is with the devils somewhere in
the Jebel Kaf. Allah knows he was too good for me; my pride in him was
too great! And so they took him, and put a miscreant, a devil, in his
place. They say he has a mighty treasure written in his name, so that
none but he can free it from the spell that guards it; that shows us
what he really is, for who but a jinni, a vile changeling, would hide
so glad a secret from his loving mother? Thou sayest, Has he killed
the good Emir? He may have done so, for I say he is no child of mine;
he is a devil. Tell all the world my son is lost to me, carried off to
the Jebel Kaf or some lone ruin; and a jinni masquerades in his
likeness, doing evil."

She screamed her parrot-scream; she could not talk. It was one of her
black days when the world was turned to madness. Abdullah retired from
the vain attempt to get some sense from her with hopelessness increased
instead of lessened.

That same evening, as he sat in his house, enjoying a ray of pallid
sunshine sent through the branches of a leafless fig-tree which
stretched its gnarled, grey twisted arms before his door, Yuhanna
Mahbub came to him with an angry brow.

"What is this I hear about Iskender?" he inquired. "Within this hour I
have returned with my party from El Cuds. He has gone with the Emir to
find a treasure; is it true? I came at once to thee, his near
relation. For know that he swore to me by the Blessed Sacrament, in
the presence of witnesses, that he knew nothing of any treasure, nor
was his trip with the Emir concerned with aught save pleasure. This I
tell thee that thou blame me not hereafter if I take dire vengeance on
the perjured dog."

"Wait a little, O 'Hanna," said Abdullah pacifically, "thou wilt learn,
in sh' Allah, that he did not swear falsely. All this scandal is the
produce of Elias, whom all men know for the very father of lies. Wait,
I tell thee, and the poor lad's innocence will be seen."

"Aye, wait I must perforce, for he is absent. Were he here among us, I
should not have had recourse to thee unless as bearer of his dead body.
He swore, I tell thee, by the Blessed Sacrament! Shall such a wretch
live on, to practise sacrilege?"