mob, the inhabitants of the bazaar, with those who, understanding
nothing of the cause of the tumult, had joined in merely for the sport,
were after the woman like a pack of hounds.

If it had not been for the limp caused by the shortening of one leg,
and which became more noticeable the more she ran, she might have
escaped in the crowd in the Place Rameses and been alive to-day. But
the pack, as they ran, shouted, "A lame dog, a lame dog! Who has seen
a lame dog?" and those who had rushed to door or window to watch the
fun pointed her out with yells of laughter. She found a few moments'
respite when she tripped and fell over the neck of a recumbent camel
indistinguishable in the gloom of the side street into which she had
turned as she headed for her own house.

She had no distinct plan in her head; she was too exhausted to think;
she only knew, as know all wounded animals, that home is the place to
get to when stricken unto death. If she had just sat quite still on
the kerb, pulled a bit of stuff across her face and pointed way down
the street, with peals of laughter, the mob would have swept past her
and she would have been safe; but she blindly ran for home. If she had
stayed where she had fallen, behind the camel which lurched to its feet
as the pack ran by, she would even then have been safe, but she lay,
face down in the filth, only long enough to regain her breath, which
sounded like a whistle as it shrilled through the twisted mouth. With
breath regained she was up and away, with the secret door in the
wall--which had been discovered in her absence--as her goal, just as
the human hounds, doubling on their tracks, tore into the street, to
see the fluttering end of her dress disappear round a corner.

She ran with a twisting, shuffling lope horrible to see; she looked
like some wounded animal as, bent double, she paused again for breath,
just for one moment, with face to the wall. She ran on; she stumbled
and regained her footing; she fell on her crippled knees; then onto her
face in the dust, where she remained, breathing like a far-spent horse,
with bloodstained foam flecking the corners of her mouth. A great
shivering shook her as she listened to the shouting, yelling mob
questing this way and that for the lost quarry. She did not pray; poor
Zulannah! she knew nothing of a God of Love or Pity to pray to; she lay
still, burying her fingers in the sand, clinging desperately to what
remained to her of