you
are brave men, as you are generous foes!"

With a single sign of his hand, their leader waved them back where they
crowded around her, and leaped down from his saddle, and led the horse
he had dismounted to her.

"Maiden," he said gently, "we are Arabs, but we are not brutes. We swore
to avenge ourselves on an enemy; we are not vile enough to accept a
martyrdom. Take my horse--he is the swiftest of my troop--and go you on
your errand; you are safe from me."

She looked at him in stupor; the sense of his words was not tangible to
her; she had had no hope, no thought, that they would ever deal thus
with her; all she had ever dreamed of was so to touch their hearts and
their generosity that they would spare one from among their troop to do
the errand of mercy she had begged of them.

"You play with me;" she murmured, while her lips grew whiter and her
great eyes larger in the intensity of her emotion. "Ah! for pity's
sake, make haste and kill me, so that this only may reach him!"

The chief, standing by her, lifted her up in his sinewy arms, on to the
saddle of his charger. His voice was very solemn, his glance was very
gentle; all the nobility of the highest Arab nature was aroused in him
at the heroism of a child, a girl, an infidel--one, in his sight,
abandoned and shameful among her sex.

"Go in peace," he said simply; "it is not with such as thee that we
war."

Then, and then only, as she felt the fresh reins placed in her hands,
and saw the ruthless horde around her fall back and leave her free, did
she understand his meaning, did she comprehend that he gave her back
both liberty and life, and, with the surrender of the horse he loved,
the noblest and most precious gift that the Arab ever bestows or ever
receives. The unutterable joy seemed to blind her, and gleam upon her
face like the blazing light of noon, as she turned her burning eyes full
on him.

"Ah! now I believe that thine Allah rules thee, equally with Christians!
If I live, thou shalt see me back ere another night; if I die, France
will know how to thank thee!"

"We do not do the thing that is right for the sake that men may
recompense us," he answered her gently. "Fly to thy friend, and
hereafter do not judge that those who are in arms against thee must
needs be as the brutes that seek out whom they shall devour."

Then, with one word in his own tongue, he bade the horse bear her
southward, and, as swiftly as a spear launched from his ha