Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/38

"Peace upon Thee, Apostle of Allah, and the Mercy and the Blessings! Peace upon Thee, O Seal of the Prophets!"—his voice rose and sank in turn, dying away in a thin, quavering tremolo, again bursting forth in palpable fervor, massive, unashamed, sublimely unself-conscious amid the silence of the snows.

"By the Three, the Seven, the Forty-seven True Saints! By the horns of the Angel Israfil! Teach me to see after ignorance!"

The faith in his heart bubbled to his lips—a lonely prayer, but a prayer which was to him a trumpet call of God's eternal laws, a rally clear around the world, a force in his heart to grip the everlasting meannesses of life and strife and smash them against the unchanging portals of peace.

"Peace!" He bit on the word. His lips savored it as a precious thing, then blew it free to lash the cool hill air with the sound of it. A light like a clear flame came into his eyes, illumining his face.

It was not altogether that of an ascetic, in spite of the downward furrows graven deep by long hours of meditation. For the nose beaked out bold and aquiline, with flaring, nervous nostrils, speaking of courage—unconscious, racial courage—scotched, it is true, by his Persian ancestry, by breeding and training and deliberate modes of thought, but always there, dark-smoldering, ready to leap.

Even Dost Ali read the signs, though he had never had cause to learn the kind of mental stenography known as character reading and psycology, preferring to judge men by the work of their hands and the venom of their tongues. But he had known fighters—fighters of many raceshadji and this—

"Peace, O Opener of the Locks of Grief!" droned