"Zaida ?" he asked, with a sigh of pity.
"The monk who passed thee but now goes every year to the Place of Lepers with the caravan, for a brother of this order stays yonder with the afflicted, seeing no more the faces of this world which he has left behind.

Afar off from each other they stand--as far as eye can see--and after the manner of their faith they pray to Allah, and he who has just left us finds a paper fastened with a stone upon the sand at a certain place where he waits.

He touches it not, but reads it as it lies, and, having read, heaps sand upon it.

And the message which the paper gives is for me." "For thee?
Hast thou there one who--" "There was one, my father's son, though we were of different mothers; and in other days, so many years ago, he did great wrong to me, and not to me alone,"-- the grey head bowed in sorrow--"but to one dearer to me than life.

I hated him, and would have slain him, but the mind of Allah is not the mind of man; and he escaped me.