Page:The Celebrated Romance of the Stealing of the Mare.djvu/86

 what might come to her through the stealing of the mare. And she returned to her tent, and threw herself upon her bed, weeping with both eyes. This for her. But as to the Emir Abu Zeyd, he too fell adoubting as he rode; and he said, " If I go back now to the Arabs, mine own people, and to my business, nor take thought of Alia, it will certainly happen that our doings will be made known, and her father will slay her; and, on the other hand, if I should return to her, it will be a matter of long duration, and I shall be a great while withheld from my people and my affairs. Now, therefore, it were better I should go see that which is happening among them." And he stopped at a fountain of water, and he drank of it, and he gave his mare to drink. And he sat him down to think over all his plan,and he remembered the day of judgment, and the oath that he had taken to Alia that he would return to her before going to his own people. And this is what happened in the case of the Emir Abu Zeyd.

And at this point the Narrator began once more to sing, and it was in the following verses:

So did my thought return to the Helali Salame,

When he took with him the mare, and set him to do his purpose,

With all that him befell, O men, among the great ones.

The grooms of the mare went in to the grey mare to groom her,

Entered within her tent, and found a lantern burning,