Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/78

 the lad seven years old. By blood I considered Chakendé superior to Djimlah; for Djimlah's forefathers, for hundreds of years, had been officials, while Chakendé's had been warriors. They had been followers of the great Tartar ruler Timur-Lang, with whose people the Turks had been in constant warfare for centuries—now one side and then the other being victorious. It was this Timur-Lang, who, early in the fifteenth century, defeated the Turks, in the great battle of Angora, and took Sultan Bayazet captive, and kept him prisoner in a cage till he died.

Chakendé was very proud of this descent, and although she was now half full of Turkish blood, yet she clung to her Tartar ancestry, and when she told me about the battles her eyes lighted up and she was very pretty.

The lad to whom she was engaged, and whom she had not yet seen, was also of the same clan, and she already entertained for him much affection, and often spoke of him in such terms as, "my noble Bey," "my proud betrothed."

The more we saw of her the better we liked her, not only because she submitted to us, but because she fitted so well into all the parts we gave her to play, and we generally gave her such parts as we did not ourselves like to do. Whenever there was any fighting to do she was ordered to do it, because she could give such a terrific yell—the