may comply with the command of Allah, the great, the glorious, issued through Mohammed the Apostle, on whom be peace."
"There lie my three slaves," I said. "Take them and leave me my hand."
"Their value is but slight," said the ruffian, glancing contemptuously at them. "Now if you will include the camels, together with their trappings, all weapons and ammunition, and all things which they have carried to this place, your person excepted, then will I consider your offer."
"What! All these for a song-bird?"
"Nay, for your left hand."
"Take them—take all," I moaned. "I may as well be utterly ruined."
"You heard him?" asked the fellow triumphantly.
"We heard, and bear witness," replied my slaves and his, in a chorus.
"Unbind these slaves, girl, since they are now mine," he ordered.
When she had unbound them, and they had stretched their cramped limbs, he said: "Ho slaves! Two of you attend the beasts, and the third come here. I have yet a duty to perform toward this stealer of slaves and violator of the harim."
When my former black slave had come up to where I sat, in accordance with the command of his new master, the mendicant continued: "Much as it pains me to dwell on the many offenses of this habitual criminal, there is yet another crime which must be expiated. This villain, who is so crafty he could steal the kohl from off the eyelid, and so depraved he would undertake it, has pilfered, in addition to other property, the cage in which the bird of my slave is confined. He who would steal the home of a bird must be a scoundrel indeed. Now the Koran explicitly commands that when a fourth offense of this nature is committed, the right foot shall be cut off. Who am I to disregard the commands of Allah, the One and Most High God?"
"It is there you are in error," I corrected him, "for the Sooneh law expressly ordains that this punishment shall not be inflicted if the value of the stolen property be less than a quarter of a deenar"
"Unfortunately for your argument, and your foot," he replied, "the cage cost me exactly twice that sum. Unbind his legs, therefore, slave, that I may comply with the law."
"Is there no alternative, but that you strike off his foot?" asked the girl. "There is absolutely none," he replied.
"Has he not just told us that he is penniless?"
"Yet he has one thing which everyone has, and which he can give," said the girl.
"What is that?" asked her master.
"His blessing," she replied.
"True enough, yet it does not suffice."
"But it is something."
"It is something. If he give me his blessing, I will only strike off part of his foot."
And so, near choking with rage at the irony of this final humiliation, I called upon Almighty Allah to bless this malefactor, his slaves, his relatives, and his descendants.
Scarcely had I finished, ere he swung his simitar and cut off all the toes of my right foot. Then, while my former slave held me, he plunged the wounded stump into boiling oil, and stopped the bleeding. At this, I swooned dead away. . . .
When I came to my senses, I was
alone. There was no sign of the
beasts or the people who had surrounded
me when I fainted. My hands had been
unbound, and in one of them was a note.
Gritting my teeth with the pain of my
