The old lank straightness was gone, the shoulders were bent, the head was thrust forward, as though the long habit of looking into dark places had bowed it out of all manhood.
"May grass spring under thy footstep, Saadat," he said, in a thick voice, and salaamed awkwardly--he had been so long absent from life's formularies.
"What dost thou here, pasha ?" asked David formally.

"Thy sentence had no limit." "I could not die there," said the hollow voice, and the head sank farther forward.

"Year after year I lived there, but I could not die among them.

I was no leper; I am no leper.

My penalty was my penalty, and I paid it to the full, piastre by piastre of my body and my mind.