EBNO’L AMED.

eyes, he found himself looking straight into Abul Hasham’s face again. When
he did sleep, however, he slept very soundly, and it was so dark in the loft that
he slept very late.

Through a crack in the palm-leaf roof he could see that it was broad day-
light when he opened his eyes, and, wondering that his mother had not called
him to say his prayers at sunrise, he crept to the opening into the room below.

Looking down, he started back in terror, and his heart stood still. All was
confusion there. The mat upon which his mother slept was torn, and Umdhabai
was nowhere to be seen.

Gathering courage, at last, he dropped to the floor, and hurried to the open
door. No. Shewasnot anywhere. Looking toward the nearest huts, he saw at
once that something very serious had happened.

A few old men and women were sitting on the ground, before the doors,
wailing and moaning as they did at funerals. It could not be that his mother was
dead, or they would be at his door, instead. Yet she could not be alive, or she
would surely be there, wailing and moaning with the rest.

While he stood, wondering, in the door, he caught one name which the
mourners pronounced louder and more frequently than all the rest. It was
“ Abul Hasham.”

Then he knew it all; and dropping upon the ground, with his back against.
the mud wall, all alone Ebno’l Amed began to wail and moan like the rest.

In a sort of spontaneous poetry, to which the Arabic is particularly adapted,
he put his thoughts into words and sang them, in a low, sad chant.

“ Abul Hasham, the terrible, came to my home, last night,” he moaned.
“My mother feared his coming, and she thought only of me. She hid me away
from him. But hecame. Oh! hecame. While I slept in safety, he came in the
night. Yes, he came and he took my mother—the light of my eyes —the
breath of my body — the blood of my heart. He has carried her away He will
sell her for a slave, far, far away from her, people. O, Umdhabai, Mamma
Umdhabai! why did I sleep? Why did 1” —

He suddenly stopped the chant, and sat looking at his little hands, as he
slowly clasped and unclasped them.

“Ts Ebno’l Amed a coward?” he asked himself. “Is he like the south
wind, which brings the sand and no rain? If I can help my mother, it will be
by being where she is.”

He sprang to his feet, and entered the hut. A moment later he came out,
wrapped up in a long white sarai, a badge of mourning, and leaving the village
walked directly toward the town.

Another caravan was in the Khan. Abu’l Hasham, with his captives, had left
during the night, by the Gate of the Sea. As the sun was setting, the second
caravan roused itself and started in the same direction. Among the motley col-
lection of followers who often form a large, unmounted company behind a great