Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/49

hills, like a sooty smudge on the crimson and gold blaze of day—and Hadji Rahmet's thoughts whirred on the parrot's wings: up to the Raven's Station.

Up there was the patter of little hard feet tapping the stone flags; a curly head, tinged with red; a sturdy little nut-brown body: Akbar Khan, the Red Chief's son, blood of his blood and bone of his bone.

Up there was childish laughter, as the old women whispered Persian fairy tales—of the flea who tried to lighten the camel's load, of Oguun, the god of little babes, whose fingers and toes are made of sugar cane and whose heart is a monstrous ball of pink sweetmeat that was baked in far China.

A child's laughter!

The thought tore the hadji's heart, ragged, paining, like a dull knife.

"O Lord!" the prayer came automatic and meaning less, "pardon and pity and pass over what Thou knowest, for Thou art the most dear and the most generous—" He was silent. He bent his head as if listening. At his feet the cataract gurgled away to the darkness of the deep-cleft passes—lap-lap-lap—mocking.

"And then," the hadji would say afterward, "the dagger of grief pricked the bubble of my faith." And a great turmoil surged in his heart, beyond control, beyond prayer even; running into something molten, finally emerging into the solid fact of his hatred, his desire for revenge.

It seemed to bring up from his heart and brain unexpected, rather forgotten qualities, as a storm-whipped wave brings up mud and gravel from the ground bed of the shore. …