is horse's head, just at the very moment when a carriage and pair
containing the beaming Consul-General and his lady, with a glorious
Cawwas upon the box, arrived upon the scene. I ran to help him, but
another person was before me. A tall old man, whose garb bespoke him
an initiated Druze, rushed out among the horses and the dust and beat
the wretched lad about the shoulders, heaping curses on that lovely
head for bringing shame upon an honoured house before such company. It
was the lad's own father, the Sheykh Mustafa. I helped to drag the old
man off, and would have gone on to console the son; but just then I
beheld Sheytan approaching with a broken head-rope. I contrived to
catch him and to mount without attending to the girths; and, once on
horseback, I was glad to be there; for quite fifty of the tethered
steeds had broken loose in the excitement, and were rushing here and
there and fighting in a most alarming way. I have always had a dread
of horse-fights, and this was not a single fight; it was a melee,
fresh horses every minute breaking loose to join it. Right in my way
two angry stallions rose up, boxing one another like the lion and the
unicorn, and a little boy of ten or thereabouts ran in between and,
jumping, caught their head-ropes.

I escaped at last and rode down through the village to the bottom of
the valley, where a grove of walnut trees cast pleasant shade beside a
stream. There Rashid found me later in the day. He told me that my
disappearance had caused consternation and alarm, the Consul-General
and his lady having asked for me. Bidding him remain with the two
horses, I went back on foot to the castle, where I stayed only the
time necessary to pay my respects.

As I was returning towards the valley, a litter borne between two
mules was leaving the meydan. Beside it walked the stern Sheykh
Mustafa, and in it, I had little doubt, reclined the beautiful Abdul
Hamid.

I asked the serving-man who led the foremost mule if his young lord
was seriously hurt. He answered:

'Yes; for he has broken his elbow and his shoulder and his
collar-bone. But that is nothing, since he has disgraced our house.'

A bitter wail of 'Woe the day!' came from within the palanquin.

CHAPTER XVII

TRAGEDY

The sun was sinking down over the sea, the mountain wall with all its
clefts and promontories wore a cloak of many colours, when we saw
before us on a rock a ruined tower. We were looking for some human
ha