Page:The Celebrated Romance of the Stealing of the Mare.djvu/30

 Going by paths unknown in the wide, trackless desert,

Nor turned my head again when they had turned back silent.

Thus was our parting done. Shame rest with the gainsayer.

Said the Narrator:

And when Abu Zeyd had made an end of speaking, and the Kadi Diab and the Sultan and Rih, and all had happened as hath been said, then the Emir Abu Zeyd mounted his running camel and bade farewell to the Arabs and was gone, and all they who remained behind were in fear thinking of his journey. But Abu Zeyd went on alone, nor stayed he before he came to the pastures of the Agheylat. And behold, in the first of their vallies as he journeyed onward the slaves of the Agheylat saw him and came upon him, threatening him with their spears, and they said to him, "O Sheykh, who and what art thou, and what is thy story, and the reason of thy coming?" And he said to them, "O worthy men of the Arabs, I am a poet, of them that sing the praise of the generous and the blame of the niggardly." And they answered him, "A thousand welcomes, O poet." And they made him alight and treated him with honour until night came upon their feasting, nor did he depart from among them until the night had advanced to a third, but remained with them, singing songs of praise, and reciting lettered phrases until they were stirred by his words, and astonished at