Article Text
there was no mistaking the thrill of his voice. There fell a soft step behind him and a shadow from the doorway. He turned. A graceful stripling in turban and caftan of cloth of gold salaamed to him from the topmost step. And as he came upright and the light of the lanterns fell full upon his face the astonishingly white fairness of it was revealed—a woman's face it might have been, so softly rounded was it in its beardlessness. Asad smiled wryly in his white beard, guessing that the boy had been sent by his ever-watchful mother to learn who came and what the tidings that they bore. "Thou hast heard, Marzak?" he said. "Sakr-el-Bahr is returned." "Victoriously, I hope," the lad lied glibly. "Victorious beyond aught that was ever known," replied Tsamanni. "He sailed at sunset into the harbor, his company aboard two mighty Frankish ships, which are but the lesser part of the great spoils he brings." "Allah is great," was the Basha's glad welcome of this answer to those insidious promptings of his Sicilian wife. "Why does he not come in person with his news?" "His duty keeps him yet awhile aboard, my lord," replied the wazeer. "But he hath sent his kayia Othmani here to tell the tale of it." "Thrice welcome be thou, Othmani." He beat his hands together, whereat slaves placed cushions for him upon the ground. He sat and beckoned Marzak to his side. "And now thy tale." And Othmani standing forth related how they had voyaged to distant England in the ship that Sakr-el-Bahr had captured, through seas that no corsair yet had ever crossed, and how on their return they had engaged a Dutchman that was their superior in strength and numbers; how none the less Sakr-el-Bahr had wrested victory by the help of Allah, his protector, how he had been dealt a wound that must have slain any but one miraculously preserved for the greater glory of Islam, and of the surpassing wealth of the booty which at dawn tomorrow should be laid at Asad's feet for his division of it. (To Be Continued) considerable sprinter, I feared I should run off in which case would result in a serious disadvantage. "I am opposed to La Follette for two reasons: first, because he himself is his platform and it is impossible for a man either to run or stand on himself and secondly, because in his statements, he fails to name the colored people of Norfolk specifically and it is they in whom I am most vitally interested." BANK SUSPENDED Inability to earn sufficient return upon the money invested is given as the cause of the failure of the Union Laborers Savings Bank, Washington, D. C.