Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/61

Now his father was dead. There was no lack of gold; and once more the thought of home had come to Yar Khan like a sudden inrush of light after a long, leaden, unlifting day. He was off to his own country in the Month of Pilgrimages.

The old priest whom he met at Bokhara—mumbling his prayers and clicking his rosary beads in front of the little pink mosque of Bala-i-Hava—told him that there was a certain significance to the date—told him, too, after the thin, pretentious manner of Moslem hierarchy, that he did not know if the omen be bad or good—"For," he added, "there is no power nor strength save in Allah the Most High!" and Yar Khan, who had lost most of his respect for holy men in the blue, slippery mud of the Nile, snapped his fingers with gentle derision, threw the whining graybeard a handful ot chipped copper coins, and turned to the bazaars to buy presents for his cousins.

He bought and bought—embroidered silks from Khiva and from far Moscow, pink and green sweetmeats from across the Chinese border, and Persian silver filigree for the young girls. He paid royally, without bargaining; for to-day he was master—buying, not selling—and the smooth touch of the gold pieces as he took them from his twisted waistband and clinked them down on the counter was pleasant. It was like a prophecy: of conquest and, in a way, of freedom. He swung the furry goat-skin bag which held his purchases over his supple shoulders and turned toward the open market-place to buy a horse.

Rapidly he passed through the bunched crowds—crowds of all Asia—solemn, impassive-looking Bokharans, gently ambling along on gaily caparisoned mules; straight-backed gipsies, swaggering with the