Page:Marion Crawford - Khaled.djvu/264

 Then Khaled and Zehowah paused for a moment near the gate.

'It is better that you should go back, my beloved,' said Khaled. 'Hear what a multitude of angry men are waiting outside.'

'I will not leave you—neither in life nor in death,' she answered.

'Let it be so, then,' said Khaled, 'and I will do my best. For a hundred men could not stop the way before me now, and I think that of five hundred I could slay many.'

So he went up to the gate, and Zehowah stood a little behind him so as to be free of the first sweep of his sword.

'Abdullah!' cried some of the crowd without, while battering at the iron-bound doors. 'Abdullah, thou son of Mohammed and father of lies, come out to us, or we will go to thee!'

'Abdullah, thou thief, thou Persian, thou cheat, come out, and may boiling water be thy portion!'

'Stand back from the gate, and I will open it to you!' cried Khaled in a voice that might have been heard across the Red Desert as far as the shores of the great ocean.

'I, Khaled, will open,' he cried again.

Then there was a great silence and the people fell back a little.