'I have seen Rukrooth my mother while I slept;
and she was weeping, weeping by a stream, yea, a stream of blood; and it
was a stream that flowed in a hundred gushes from her own veins. The sun
of this dawn now, seest thou not? 'tis overcrimson; the vulture hangeth
low down yonder valley.' And he cried to her, 'Haste! mount with me; for
I have told Rukrooth a thing; and I know that woman crafty in the
thwarting of schemes; such a fox is she where aught accordeth not with
her forecastings, and the judgment of her love for me! By Allah! 'twere
well we clash not; for that I will do I do, and that she will do doth
she.'

So the twain mounted their steeds, and Ruark gathered his Arabs and
placed them, some in advance, some on either side of Bhanavar; and they
rode forward to the head of the valley, and across the meadows, through
the blushing crowds of flowers, baths of freshest scents, cool breezes
that awoke in the nostrils of the mares neighings of delight; and these
pranced and curvetted and swung their tails, and gave expression to their
joy in many graceful fashions; but a gloom was on Ruark, and a quick fire
in his falcon-eye, and he rode with heels alert on the flanks of his
mare, dashing onward to right and left, as do they that beat the jungle
for the crouching tiger. Once, when he was well-nigh half a league in
front, he wheeled his mare, and raced back full on Bhanavar, grasping her
bridle, and hissing between his teeth, 'Not a soul shall have thee save
I: by the tomb of my fathers, never, while life is with us!'

And he taunted her with bitter names, and was as one in the madness of
intoxication, drunken with the aspect of her matchless beauty and with
exceeding love for her. And Bhanavar knew that the dread of a mishap was
on the mind of the Chief.

Now, the space of pasture was behind them a broad lake of gold and
jasper, and they entered a region of hills, heights, and fastnesses,
robed in forests that rose in rounded swells of leafage, each over
each--above all points of snow that were as flickering silver flames in
the farthest blue. This was the country of Bhanavar, and she gazed
mournfully on the glades of golden green and the glens of iron blackness,
and the wild flowers, wild blossoms, and weeds well known to her that
would not let her memory rest, and were wistful of what had been. And she
thought, 'My sisters tend the flocks, my mother spinneth with the maidens
of the tribe, my father hunteth; how s