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282 proffered hand and pressing it warmly; "but he has done worse than that—"

"What! has he dared to—"

Sidi Cadua interrupted and answered the question by quietly removing the lower part of his robe, and exposing his feet, which were dreadfully swollen and scarred with the bastinado.

"Even that is not the worst of it," said the old man, re-covering his mutilated feet; "my daughter, my sweet, tender Ashweesha, has been cruelly bastinadoed for—"

He broke down here, and, covering his face with his withered hands, groaned aloud.

For a few moments Colonel Langley could not speak.

"But why," he said at length, "why such cruelty?"

Recovering himself, Sidi Cadua slowly related the circumstances. An enemy, he said, had accused him to the Dey Omar of having hidden away a large amount of treasure, and he had been put to the torture in order to force him to disclose the truth; but the truth was that he had never concealed treasure, and had no confession to make. Believing that his silence was the result of sheer obstinacy, and that the truth might perhaps be extorted from his daughter, the cruel monster had the gentle Ashweesha dragged from her apartments and subjected to the bastinado.