love
had saved him!

She gave herself up for lost; but whatever fate might have in store for
her, life lay open before him; he would have time to prove his splendid
powers, and that he would do so, as she would have him do it, she felt
certain.

She had not ended telling her nurse of the judges' decision, when the
warder announced the Kadi. In a minute or two he made his appearance;
she expressed her thanks, and he warmly assured her that he regarded the
disgrace of being perhaps a beguiled judge as a favor of Fortune; then
he turned the conversation on the real object of his visit.

In the letter, he began, which he had received the evening before from
his uncle Haschim, there was a great deal about her. She had quite won
the old merchant's heart, and the enquiries for her father which he had
set on foot....

Here she interrupted him saying: "Oh, my lord; is the wish, the prayer
of my life to be granted?"

"Your father, the noble Thomas, before whom even the Moslem bows, has
been..." and then Othman went on to tell her that the hero of Damascus
had in fact retired to Sinai and had been living there as a hermit.
But she must not indulge in premature rejoicing, for the messengers had
found him ill, consumed by disease arising from his wounded lungs, and
almost at death's door. His days were numbered....

"And I, I am a prisoner," groaned the girl. "Held fast, helpless, robbed
of all means of flying to his arms!"

He again bid her be calm, and went on to tell her: in his soft, composed
manner, that two days since a Nabathaean had come to him and had asked
him, as the chief administrator of justice in Egypt, whether an old foe
of the Moslems, a general who had fought in the service of the emperor
and the cross against the Khaliff and the crescent, and who was now
sick, weary, and broken, might venture on Egyptian soil without fear of
being seized by the Arab authorities; and when he, Othman, had learnt
that this man was no other than Thomas, the hero of Damascus, he had
promised him his life and freedom, promised them gladly, as he felt
assured his sovereign the Khaliff would desire.

So this very day her father had reached Fostat, and the Kadi had
received him as a guest into his house. Thomas, indeed, stood on the
brink of the grave; but he was inspirited and sustained by the hope of
seeing his daughter. It had been falsely reported to him that she had
perished in the massacre at Abyla and he had already mourn