intimate a difficulty; but if
Fakredeen, to elicit an opinion, sometimes hinted an adverse suggestion,
the objection was swept away in an instant by an individual whose
inflexible will was sustained by the conviction of divine favour.

CHAPTER XLV.

_The People of Ansarey_

DO YOU know anything of a people in the north of this country, called
the Ansarey?' inquired Tancred of Baroni.

'No, my lord; and no one else. They hold the mountainous country about
Antioch, and will let no one enter it; a very warlike race; they beat
back the Egyptians; but Ibrahim Pasha loaded his artillery with piastres
the second time he attacked them, and they worked very well with the
Pasha after that.' 'Are they Moslemin?'

'It is very easy to say what they are not, and that is about the extent
of any knowledge that we have of them; they are not Moslemin, they
are not Christians, they are not Druses, and they are not Jews, and
certainly they are not Guebres, for I have spoken of them to the Indians
at Djedda, who are fire-worshippers, and they do not in any degree
acknowledge them.'

'And what is their race? Are they Arabs?' 'I should say not, my lord;
for the only one I ever saw was more like a Greek or an Armenian than a
son of the desert.'

'You have seen one of them?'

'It was at Damascus: there was a city brawl, and M. de Sidonia saved the
life of a man, who turned out to be an Ansarey, though disguised. They
have secret agents at most of the Syrian cities. They speak Arabic; but
I have heard M. de Sidonia say they have also a language of their own.'

'I wonder he did not visit them.'

'The plague raged at Aleppo when we were there, and the Ansarey were
doubly rigid in their exclusion of all strangers from their country.'

'And this Ansarey at Damascus, have you ever seen anything of him
since?'

'Yes; I have been at Damascus several times since I travelled with M. de
Sidonia, and I have sometimes smoked a nargileh with this man: his name
is Dar-kush, and he deals in drugs.'

Now this was the reason that induced Tancred to inquire of Baroni
respecting the Ansarey. The day before, which was the third day of
the great hunting party at Canobia, Fakredeen and Tancred had found
themselves alone with Hamood Abuneked, and the lord of Canobia had
thought it a good occasion to sound this powerful Sheikh of the Druses.
Hamood was rough, but frank and sincere. He was no enemy of the House
of Shehaab; but the Abunekeds h