N.

Accustomed to the flowing robes of the Arab, it is not as difficult as
it might be imagined to break a desert-trained horse to side-saddle;
but the mare, Pi-Kay, spoilt and sensitive, behaved like a very demon
whilst the _sayis_ exchanged the _ma'araka_, which is the native pad
without stirrups, for the lady's saddle. She was not really bad, not
she! She was simply a spoilt beauty and inclined to show off, so that
every time her big, beautiful eye caught the sheen of the girl's satin
cloak, she backed and reared and plunged, but more out of mischief than
wickedness. For many days she had been ridden alternately astride and
side by the _sayis_, who loved her better than his wife and almost as
much as his son; ridden from the Tents of Purple and Gold--and not
over-willingly did she go--to the Gate of To-morrow at sunset, to be
taken back at a tearing gallop to the Tents, without restraining or
guiding hand upon the reins, at sunrise.

It was not sunrise now, and she did not like the person in the
shimmering satin who had, in some miraculous way, swung to her back and
stayed there; but she was headed in the direction of home, and the
moonlight was having just as much effect upon her temperament as it has
on that of humans.

A moon-struck horse or a moon-struck camel in the desert is a weird
picture and it were wise, as they are for the moment absolutely fey, to
give them an extremely wide passage.

"Guide her not, lady," shouted the _sayis_ to Damaris, who answered to
the movement of the mare like a reed in the wind, but otherwise seemed
to take no notice of horse, or man, or moon, or untoward circumstance;
he hung on for a moment to the silken mane and stared up into the
girl's unseeing eyes; then, with a ringing shout, let go and jumped
nimbly to one side.

There was no backing, no rearing, or vagary of any sort now; the mare
started on her journey; broke into a canter; broke into a gallop; then,
silken mane and tail flying, thundered back at a terrific speed along
the path marked out by her own dainty hoofs, and the relentless feet of
that hound, Fate.

Damaris turned in the saddle and looked behind, and then to her right
and then to her left.

She was alone in the desert.

The sands, stretched like a silver carpet in front of her and like a
silver carpet with the black ribbon woven across it by the mare's feet
behind; to the east and west the sandy waste seemed to undulate in
great fawn and amethyst