, "I wish to sbeak to you."

CHAPTER XII

The solemnity of Iskender's voice claimed grave attention. The Emir
recalled his gaze from far-off things, and fixed it upon the speaker
with some awe.

Both stood stock still.

"If you blease, sir, I think I tell you better sittin' down."

Iskender had espied a Muslin tomb among the leaves ahead, a small white
cube, with egg-shaped dome atop of it, having in its shade a place for
the repose of wayfarers. Thither he conducted the Emir, and both sat
down. Iskender toyed with his fingers in the crevices of its rough
pavement. He wished to enjoy his love alone as long as possible; and
the walk from thence to the hotel was but a short one. From a
garden-hedge before them, two cypress-trees stood sharply out against
the jewel sky.

"I wish to sbeak to you, sir, about something which I neffer told to
anybody. My mother knows, but no one else. Will you bromise, blease,
to keeb it secret, what I'm goin' to tell you?"

"Yes, rather! Fire away," said the Emir.

"Well, sir, I know of a blace where gold is found more blenty than the
oranges in that garden we now come from."

"You don't? You're joking!" The Emir stared at him.

"I do, sir. You know, there's lots of country neffer been exblored
away there to the south and east, behind the Jordan. No one effer goes
there. My father went there once--he was a muleteer and traffeled all
about in those days--and in the desert, far away from any houses, he
found a blace where bits of gold were lyin' on the ground quite thick
like bebbles in a mountain wady."

"But your father was not rich," the Frank objected.

"No, sir; and just because he was not rich, he could not go again and
fetch the gold. It wants horses and camels, and many men and arms to
make afraid the Bedouins. My father saw that blace with his own eyes,
and before he died he wrote a baber teach me how to get there. He told
me he got a big biece of gold, enough to make him rich, but had to drob
it after a bit, it was so heffy."

"How far is the place from here?"

"Nine days or ten, I think. When I get home I look in the baber which
my father left and see for certain."

"But perhaps your father was mistaken, and the stuff he found was not
gold at all."

"That might be." Iskender grasped his chin reflectively, admitting
that he had not thought of that contingency. "But father was a knowing
man," he added; "he looked close at things. Though he