a shrug; and they toiled in
silence towards the range of hills.

"You, who know the way, point out this valley," said the Emir as to a
dog, when they were near enough to observe the configuration of those
heights.

Iskender pointed to what seemed an opening; but knew that his gesture
carried no conviction. The Frank's cold looks askance at him deprived
him of the power to play his part.

"We shall see," said the Emir, urging his horse forward. At the
entrance to the wady he dismounted, and Iskender, who was then some way
behind, could hear derisive laughter. It was no valley at all. The
shadow of a big projecting rock had been mistaken in the distance for
an opening. The Frank was sitting calmly in that shadow when his
friend came up.

"I can see no gold here," he observed politely; "but you have better
eyes. Look well about you!"

Three parts unconscious, the unhappy youth obeyed. Alighting off his
horse, he scanned the heights above, the ground at his feet, the sandy
plain on which their mules were seen at a great distance.

"No gold! no gold!" he murmured idiotically.

"Give up this acting!" cried the Frank with vehemence. "Confess it was
all a lie! Say why you brought me here. We are man to man just now,
and may as well arrange our business before your friend the muleteer
comes up. That missionary told me to look out for villainy."

Iskender bit the dust and wept aloud, calling on Allah to attest his
innocence. To be accused of acting, when his heart was broken; to be
suspected of a purpose hostile to his patron, when he would have shed
his blood to bring a smile to that beloved face!

"Confess!" the Emir repeated; and, hearing the voice of the Father of
Ice, Iskender lied, as he had always lied, through fear, to that stern,
upright man.

"No, it is true, sir, but we went wrong somehow. My God, it is true,
sir; Elias said so too!"

"Elias is a liar. . . . Confess now that you never knew the way, and
that your father never in his life saw any valley such as that you've
so often described to me."

But Iskender would not admit that he had lied at all; to do so would
have been to justify his patron's cruel scorn. Indeed, the fiction of
the gold had grown so natural that he believed, even now, that it was
partly true.

"You never knew the way; your father never left you any paper. It is
pretty certain that he couldn't read or write. What a fool I was not
to think of that before! If the