Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/244

 rode through the streets of the town, scattering the haggling market throngs, driving some into doorways and coffee houses and mosques, causing others to snap their fingers rapidly to ward off evil spirits; for, assuredly, Al Nakia had lost the light of his reason. He, the strong, the gentle, the just, to graze a little playing child in the fury of his gallop, causing it to cry and sob and run, frightened, to its mother—he, the sober, the sane, the patient, to leap his horse across a lumbering ox cart that was not quick enough to get out of his way!

“By the Prophet!” said an old market woman, pityingly, “the stars in his soul have turned black! Madness is upon him!”

And, superstitiously, she touched the little blue-enameled “hand of Ali” she wore in her flat bosom, while Hector thundered on, twisting and turning through the twisting, turning streets, toward the baroque mass of the mausoleum that loomed up in the distance. On!—though his horse was ready to give up, its head bowed on its heaving, lathering chest, the lungs pumping the hot air painfully with a deep, rattling noise.

But he bent over the animal's neck, lifting it with every stride.

They stared after him, the men of Tamerlanistan, some angry, some mocking, some astonished; then, presently, as the tale of the trap into which Aziza Nurmahal had fallen drifted out of the palace on the servants babbling lips and was repeated from mouth to mouth, in bazaar and mosque and caravanserai, there were expressions of sympathy and pity;