Kaid motioned all his startled guests to come nearer. Then in strong,
unmerciful voice he laid Achmet's crime before them, and told the story
of the bridge-opener, who had that day expiated his crime in the desert
by the hands of Mahommed--but not with torture, as Mahommed had hoped
might be.

"What shall be his punishment--so foul, so wolfish?" Kaid asked of them
all. A dozen voices answered, some one terrible thing, some another.

"Mercy!" moaned Achmet aghast. "Mercy, Saadat!" he cried to David.

David looked at him calmly. There was little mercy in his eyes as he
answered: "Thy crimes sent to their death in the Nile those who never
injured thee. Dost thou quarrel with justice? Compose thy soul, and I
pray only the Effendina to give thee that seemly death thou didst deny
thy victims." He bowed respectfully to Kaid.

Kaid frowned. "The ways of Egypt are the ways of Egypt, and not of the
land once thine," he answered shortly. Then, under the spell of that
influence which he had never yet been able to resist, he added to the
slaves: "Take him aside. I will think upon it. But he shall die at
sunrise ere the army goes. Shall not justice be the gift of Kaid for an
example and a warning? Take him away a little. I will decide."

As Achmet and the slaves disappeared into a dark corner of the court-
yard, Kaid rose to his feet, and, upon the hint, his guests, murmuring
praises of his justice and his mercy and his wisdom, slowly melted from
the court-yard; but once outside they hastened to proclaim in the four
quarters of Cairo how yet again the English Pasha had picked from the