Abdullah’s furious indignation with Elias was complicated by a strain of keen anxiety upon his own account. Though most of the story seemed absurd to his intelligence, there remained enough of possible and even probable to justify dismay in so respectable a man. It seemed more than likely that his nephew, that unlucky boy, had led a British subject into lawless regions quite unknown to him; if harm ensued there would be trouble with the consul; and the power called Cook was so careful for its dragománs that the mere relationship to one whose face was blackened might involve dismissal. The bare idea of this contingency swamped Abdullah’s intellect in pure amazement, for since his vision of the Blessed Virgin years ago he had believed that the breath of scandal could not come near him. He crossed himself repeatedly and muttered prayers. But these misgivings were secreted from the world, before which he appeared as the intrepid champion of his absent nephew, prepared to refute the story in its entirety.

His first thought was to make Elias eat his words either by bribes or violence; but a little reflection sufficed to show it worthless. For, once pronounced, those words were all men’s utterance; the town, the countryside, was now ablaze, and Elias but a fuse that had done its work. Abdullah demanded on behalf of Iskender that all who professed any knowledge of the matter should be called and questioned in the hearing of the group of dragománs. The proprietor and servants of the khan, who had beheld Iskender’s mad excitement on the morning of the start, the discarded muleteer, Aflatun and Faris, who still lingered in the town in hopes to recover their expenses from Elias, with others quite unknown, bore witness to the suspicious manner of the young man’s flight, and the dance he had led each and all of them. Abdullah gnawed his heavy grey moustache, with eyes downcast, when Elias turned towards him with expressive hands.

From the scene of this inquiry, which was the tavern in the ruined cloister, looking through shadowed arches on the purple sea, a professional errand led Abdullah to the hotel of Musa el Barudi. The sons of Musa sat on stools before the door, as did also the priest Mitri, taking coffee with them. “What news?” they asked. Abdullah hid his face. Could it be that they had not yet heard those wicked lies about Iskender? He enlightened them forthwith with fervent crossings of himself and prayers to Allah; and confessed that he was at his wits’ end, since all the evidence obtainable tended strongly to confirm the insane story. The laughter of his hearers did him good. They ridiculed the very notion of Iskender’s guile; and they were men of position, respectable men, whose opinion was worth having, while the rest were riff-raff. Abdullah went home greatly comforted.

But the story spread and grew in all the land, with variations and most wonderful additions. People came to Abdullah for the rights of it, and were visibly disappointed and incredulous at receiving a flat denial. They wanted the true story to replace the false, and Abdullah knew no more than that Elias was a liar. He sat still in his house for hours together, gnawing his thick moustache and staring at the ground. Then he bethought him to call on the mother of Iskender, who might have knowledge of her son’s true purpose in this mad excursion. If he had abstained from visiting her till now, it was in the hope to keep from her a scandal which was sure to wound her. Now the time had come to try her value as a witness. Though the weather was bad, he could not wait for sunshine, but, taking his umbrella, walked out on to the sandhills through the pelting rain. His boots were caked with mud when he reached the little house; he would not enter therefore, but spoke from the doorway, sheltered by his umbrella. It seemed she had nothing to tell him. It was only from the voice of common rumour that she knew that her precious son had left the town, and since then reports had reached her which made her wash her hands of him for ever. When those reports came to the ears of the missionaries, as they were sure to do, it would ruin his mother in their eyes for ever.

“Take no thought for him, O Abdullah!” she cried furiously. “He is no son of mine, but a changeling of the children of the Jann. Doubtless my true son, whom I loved and nursed, is with the devils somewhere in the Jebel Kaf. Allah knows he was too good for me; my pride in him was too great! And so they took him, and put a miscreant, a devil, in his place. They say he has a mighty treasure written in his name, so that none but he can free it from the spell that guards it; that shows us what he really is, for who but a jinni, a vile changeling, would hide so glad a secret from his loving mother? Thou sayest, Has he killed the good Emir? He may have done so, for I say he is no child of mine; he is a devil. Tell all the world my son is lost to me, carried off to the Jebel Kaf or some lone ruin; and a jinni masquerades in his likeness, doing evil.”

She screamed her parrot-scream; she could not talk. It was one of her black days when the world was turned to madness. Abdullah retired from the vain attempt to get some sense from her with hopelessness increased instead of lessened.

That same evening, as he sat in his house, enjoying a ray of pallid sunshine sent through the branches of a leafless fig-tree which stretched its gnarled, grey twisted arms before his door, Yuhanna Mahbub came to him with an angry brow.

“What is this I hear about Iskender?” he inquired. “Within this hour I have returned with my party from El Cuds. He has gone with the Emir to find a treasure; is it true? I came at once to thee, his near relation. For know that he swore to me by the Blessed Sacrament, in the presence of witnesses, that he knew nothing of any treasure, nor was his trip with the Emir concerned with aught save pleasure. This I tell thee that thou blame me not hereafter if I take dire vengeance on the perjured dog.”

“Wait a little, O ’Hanna,” said Abdullah pacifically, “thou wilt learn, in sh’ Allah, that he did not swear falsely. All this scandal is the produce of Elias, whom all men know for the very father of lies. Wait, I tell thee, and the poor lad’s innocence will be seen.”

“Aye, wait I must perforce, for he is absent. Were he here among us, I should not have had recourse to thee unless as bearer of his dead body. He swore, I tell thee, by the Blessed Sacrament! Shall such a wretch live on, to practise sacrilege?”

“May Allah, of his mercy, show the truth to us,” replied Abdullah, while Yuhanna went off, breathing threats against the perjurer. He prayed to God that his nephew might not have sworn falsely and so incurred the punishment of everlasting fire. Yet there was much treasure lying undiscovered in the land, and it might be that his nephew had got wind of some of it. He knew not what to think, but spent most of the night in prayer, prostrate before that tiny picture of the Mother of God which he had set up to commemorate his radiant vision.

In the morning came the finishing blow. He stood in the doorway, watching his chickens pecking amid the wet litter of refuse round the trunk of the fig-tree, when the sound of a horse’s hoof-beats reached his ears, and presently from a narrow opening in the neighbouring wall emerged a Frank in black clothes, black, leaf-shaped hat and yellow riding-boots the Father of Ice in person. The missionary dismounted, tied his horse by the head-rope to a loose stone of the wall, and came forward, stooping to escape the branches of the fig-tree.

“Welcome, sir!” exclaimed Abdullah, smiling and bowing, though his mind misgave him. “My house a boor one, sir, but at your service.”

“Good day to you,” replied the missionary coldly, and passed in before him.

“I have come about this shocking business of your nephew,” he observed, declining to sit down, though Abdullah brought forth cushions. “The news reached me only yesterday, and I have been this morning to see that man Elias. His story seems quite clear, in spite of all the nonsense about buried treasure. The young Englishman doubtless took a considerable sum of money with him, and Iskender has beguiled him by the story of the treasure, meaning to rob him, if not worse.”

“Oh, sir, it’s all a lie, by God!” exclaimed Abdullah; but the Father of Ice paid no attention to him.

“I grieve to think of that misguided boy. He was like a child of our own at the Mission, till bad companions led him into evil ways. Of course, now he must pay the penalty of his transgression. You natives must be taught once more that the life and property of British subjects are not to be lightly made away with. I wrote to the consul last night, directly I had news of this atrocious affair. Iskender, poor misguided boy, will bear the punishment. But in my opinion, and in the sight of God, there are others more to blame than he in the matter. I mean those who led him astray, who first suggested to him a life of fraud and peculation.” The missionary looked straight into Abdullah’s eyes with the sternness of a righteous judge. “It is of no use to deny your own part in it, for I have spoken with the mother of the wretched lad, and she has told me how you were the first to propose that he should attach himself to this young English visitor with a view to making money, how you egged him on and taught him all the tricks of the trade. Are you not ashamed of yourself, an old man, with death close before you? But all you natives are alike conscienceless, blind to the truth as if a curse from God was on you. Be sure that I, for one, am not blind to your guilt in this affair, and that I shall mention it to Cook’s agent at the first opportunity. You have led the boy to renounce his faith, and now to crime! I hope you are proud of your handiwork! Good-day!”

Abdullah found not a word. He stood staring at his feet, stunned and trembling. The whole structure of his pride caved in on him. He, the Sheykh of the Dragománs, the respectable of respectables, made so by especial favour of the Blessed Virgin, to hear such words from one of those very English whose esteem upheld him! He soiled his face with mud and camel’s dung and sat in his house, lamenting, refusing every comfort that his wife or the sympathising neighbours could devise to offer. Some two hours after noon there came a storm with terrifying flashes. The thunder shook the house, the solid earth. At one moment the gnarled and twisted branches of the fig-tree were seen black against a sharp illumination, the next smoke-grey and weird amid the inky gloom. They seemed like snakes approaching stealthily, and then like loathsome arms intent to seize his soul. The storm gave place to steady rain; the world was lightened somewhat, but without relief. Abdullah, though a prey to all the horrors, sat there quite still till evening, when suddenly the force of life returned to him. He rushed out to the nearest tavern, called for arac, and drank heavily. The honour which had resulted from his vision now seemed torn from him; and since She withdrew her favour, he was free to break his vow. That night, returning home, he snatched the sacred picture from its shelf and trod it under foot, to his wife’s terror.