Page:Marion Crawford - Khaled.djvu/28

 his mare was eating. Then he looked everywhere near the well to see whether some traveller had not perhaps dropped a few dates or a little barley by accident, but there was nothing.

'Doubtless,' he said, 'Allah wishes to show me that greediness is a sin even on the day of feasting.'

He drank as much of the water as he could in order to stay his hunger as well as assuage his thirst, and then he saddled the mare and rode up out of the hollow towards the hill country. Towards the middle of the night he came to a small village where all the people were celebrating the feast, having killed a young camel and several sheep. Seeing that he was a traveller they bade him be welcome, and he sat down among them and ate his fill of meat, praising Allah. And corn was given to his mare, so that the dumb animal also kept the feast.

'Truly,' said the people, 'thy mare is a daughter of Al Borak, the heavenly steed called "the Lightning," upon which the nocturnal journey was accomplished by the Prophet, upon whom be peace.'

They said this not because they divined that the mare had been given to Khaled by an angel, but because they saw by her beauty that she must be swift as the wind. For she had a large head, with bony cheeks, and a full forehead and round black eyes wide apart, with smooth black skin about them, and a pointed nose,