but he made no outcry. It is hard to kick against
the pricks in some lands.

He did not believe the bow-string pillow-case and
solid-shot story, but he knew that he should never
look upon her face again. What he did believe was
that she had been taken to some distant city and there
sold.

For days he shut himself up in his palace. Then,
having overheard a conversation in his garden between
two eunuchs--placed there for that purpose--
he got together a few belongings, took his faithful
caique-ji, and travelled a-field. If what he had heard
was true she was in or near Damascus. Here would
he go. If, after searching every nook and cranny, he
failed to find her, he would return and carry out his
sovereign's commands and marry the princess--a
woman he had never laid his eyes on and who might
be as ugly as sin and as misshapen as Yuleima was
beautiful. It was while engaged in this fruitless
search that he met Joseph, to whom he had poured
out his heart (so Joe assured me, with his hand on
his shirt-front), hoping to enlist his sympathies and
thus gain his assistance.

All this time the heartbroken girl, rudely awakened
from her dream of bliss, was a prisoner in the
deserted house next the mosque. As the dreary
months went by her skin regained its pinkness and