ght sleeveless
shirts of striped stuff, and trousers of Turkish cut. Their feet were
bare.

Strange enough figures they made, black as coal, muscled like
Hercules, and towering well toward seven feet, with arms and hands in
which the sinews stood out like living welts. Their faces expressed
neither intelligence nor much ferocity. Submission to Bara Miyan's
will marked their whole attitude.

"Sa'ad," commanded Bara Miyan, "seest thou this dog?"

"Master, I see," answered one of the gigantic blacks, speaking with a
strange, thick accent.

"Lead him away, thou and Musa. He was brought us by these _zawwar_
(visitors). Thy hands and Musa's are strong. Remember, no drop of
blood must be shed in El Barr.[1] But let not the dog see another sun.
I have spoken."

[Footnote 1: Literally "The Plain." This name, no doubt, originally
applied only to the vast inner space surrounded by the Iron Mountains,
seems to have come to be that of Jannati Shahr itself, when spoken
of by its inhabitants. El Barr is probably the secret name that Rrisa
would not divulge.]

The gigantic executioner--the strangler--named Sa'ad, seized Abd el
Rahman by the right arm. Musa, his tar-hued companion, gripped him by
the left. Never a word uttered the Apostate as he was led away through
the horsemen. But he gave one backward look, piercing and strange, at
the Master who had thus delivered him to death--a look that, for all
the White Sheik's aplomb, strangely oppressed him.

Then the horsemen closed about the two Maghrabi, or East Africans,
and about their victim. Abd el Rahman, the Great Apostate, as a living
man, had forever passed from the sight of the Flying Legion.

His departure, in so abrupt and deadly simple a manner, gave the
Master some highly conflicting thoughts. The fact that no blood was
ever to be shed in this city had reassuring aspects. On the other
hand, how many of these Maghrabi stranglers did Bara Miyan keep as a
standing army? A Praetorian guard of men with gorilla-hands like the
two already seen might, in a close corner, prove more formidable than
men armed with the archaic firearms of the place or with cold steel.

A sensation of considerable uneasiness crept over the Master as he
pondered the huge strength and docility of these two executioners.
It was only by reflecting that the renegade Sheik would gladly have
murdered the whole Legion, and that now (by a kind of poetic justice)
he had been delivered back into the hands