EBNO’L AMED.

Tsaiah used, and which one hears every day in the East, where there are venders
of anything. The usual meaning is that the purchaser is expected to be par-
ticularly liberal; but for once in her life Umdhabai would have been glad to be
taken at her word.

The Moor placed the basket on his shoulder, simply asking, “ Where shall
I send the money ?”

“To the house nearest to the Gate of the Desert,” Umdhabai replied in a
faint voice as she rose to her feet, and taking Ebno’l Amed by the hand whis-
pered, “ Come, we must hurry.”

Faster and faster she walked, till the boy was obliged to run. They passed
the house by the gate, then the gate,

and still hurried on over the sand toward
the village.

At first Ebno’l Amed wondered why
his mother had sacrificed the price of
her fruit rather than tell the Moor truly
where she lived, but as they hurried on
he looked up and asked :

“ Mamma, was that Abu’l Hasham?”

Umdhabai did not answer, for, in
truth, no one had told her that it was
he; but Ebno’l] Amed knew well enough
that he was right, and shuddered as he
thought that he had looked, for a mo-
ment, into the face of Abul Hasham,
the slave-dealer.

All day long the mother’s eyes were
kept upon her boy. Ebno’l Amed real-
ied it, and was glad of it; for he had
heard many a story of the mysterious
ways by which Abu’ Hasham stole whom he would, carried them off, and sold
them as slaves.

He tried to make himself think that he was not a coward, and was not afraid,
but he knew very well that he was afraid.

Ebno’l Amed slept upon a mat, close to his mother, upon the earth floor of
the one little room in their hut; but above that room, and close under the roof,
his father had constructed a low, dark loft, where they often stored their fruit
‘when it was ripening too fast, and, though it was not a comfortable place to
sleep, Ebno’l Amed obeyed without a word, when his mother directed him to take
his mat up there for the night.

It seemed as though he could never go to sleep. The moment he shut his

 

poe

THE CARAVAN IN MOTION,