The One Who Went Away
be frightened at the dark like this. Queer things have happened lately, I'm not denying, but they're queer only because we have not happened to hit on the right explanation of them. Don't you know that yourselves?" One or two heads nodded doubtfully. "I'm not going to argue with you; I'm not even going to tell you that you're fools. In regard to Daheer, who went away last night—how do you know but that one of your own number, in revenge for his faithfulness to me, frightened him in the night-time, so that he, thinking the hand of evil was upon him, fled into the desert to escape?"
They did not know. Quickly they saw his point—an Arab is not slow-witted—and discussed it among themselves. Each knew that himself had not done it—that
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