Page:Marion Crawford - Khaled.djvu/88

 'I will go with you,' she repeated, looking at him.

'She does not understand you,' said the women, laughing at her ignorance of their own tongue.

'It is no matter,' said Khaled. 'She will learn in due time. Perhaps it has pleased Allah to send my lord the Sultan a wife without a tongue for a blessing in his old age.'

'I will go with you,' Almasta said again.

'She can say nothing else,' jeered the women.

One of them pulled her by her upper garment, so that she looked round.

'Can you say this, "My father was a dog and the son of dogs"?' asked the woman.

But Almasta pushed her angrily away, for she half understood. Then the woman grew angry too, and shook her fist in Almasta's face.

'If you fight, you shall eat sticks,' said Khaled, and then they were all quiet.

Thus he took possession of the city of Haïl and remaining there some time he reduced all the country to submission, so that it remained a part of the kingdom of Nejed for many years after that. For the power of the Shammars was broken, and they could nowhere have mustered a thousand men able to bear arms. Khaled set a governor in the place of the Sultan and ordered all the laws of the country in the same manner as those of Nejed, and after he had been absent from Riad nearly two months,