Adventure Magazine Cover — page 60: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

34 the entrance, he cast off his own valuable garments and the Arab’s eyes glistened on beholding the jewel-sewn folds of the turban and the cloth-of-gold girdle. When the Arab was naked, Hassan almost so, and the two fugitives clad in their cloth- ing, Demid adjusted a veil about the lower portion of Michael’s face, and turned to study the old man who without weapons and cloak looked very much like a shorn lion. ‘“Ffearken, O father of trickery,” he said quietly. “It is for you to cover the road of our flight with the dust of discretion. You have no love for Sidi Ahmad, and I am his foe.” - “Then you are a fool, because within these walls you can not escape him,” re- torted the thief frankly, adding that the ‘gates were closed. ‘“‘No more can he escape me,’’ assented Demid, and even Hassan choked with aston- ishment. ‘‘You are the gainer by my :gar- ments, but wear them not abroad or show them, lest you be put into a shroud.” “Mashallah!” ‘“‘And these garments of the Frank, con- ‘ceal them likewise. You will have your weapons back again. But as surety for your silence I will take with me this boy, your son, who must guide us to a piace of good hiding.” At this the Arab wailed and fell on his knees, beating his head against ‘the stone, and crying that Hassan was a piece ‘of his liver, the very core of his heart. ' “He will not suffer,’ said Demid mainly, “if we are not found by those who seek us out. If you betray us I will cut his body ‘open and lay him out by the butchers’ quar- ter where the dogs will *“Ai-al Allah prosper thee, harm: him not, and the master of the Wolf’s Ear can not make me speak. By my beard, upon the Koran I swear it!’’ “Good. I am not a breaker of promises: see to it that you are likewise.” While he spoke, Demid thrust the sword given him by the Turks under his cloak, signed for Michael to do likewise with the other weapon, and pushed his beard ‘behind a fold of the voluminous garment. Picking up a cord, he bound one end about the wrist of Hassan and the other to Michael’s’ sash. ‘Stoop when you walk, mv friend,” he “and speak thickly if one addresses said, you. Look upon the ground, and wonder hole in the ground. Adventure not. The reason for this will be known to you when we reach ‘tthe only place that is safe in Aleppo.” It was not hard for Michael to counter- feit weariness, and they passed unnoticed out of the gallery, through the courtyard, into the crowded alley. Demid caught snatches of talk that told him how their horses had been found not far from here, but as they had dismounted at the end of the arcade where deep shadow had hidden them, no one was sure where the prisoners had gone. Even as they turned away, a detachment of janizaries pushed through the throngs and entered the seraz. A miskal of gold had been promised the one who found El Kadhr and the escaped Frank. Demid however, :loitered along and stopped to buy some dates and rice for Michael. When Hassan came up, leading the supposedly sick man, Demid whispered to the boy to show the way to the Gate of Victory. And Hassan gave proof that the byways of Aleppo were well known to him. From one arcade to another, down into a dark wine cellar, thence through a passage to a coffee house—where Demid took time to sit and drink a bowl—up into the quarter of the saddlers and shield-makers where hides, hung up to dry filled the air with a stench greater than that of the hovels they had left—from there to the covered court of a bathhouse he led them. Men stopped him, ‘to ask questions, but the boy’s wit found a ready answer and Demid took the center of the alleys, reeling along like a desert man who had sat up with the wine bowl the night before. “‘To the well of the lepers,” he muttered, drawing up to Hassan. The boy shivered, but just then a group of the palace guards came up to search the bath and he turned aside among the heaps of cinders from the bathhouse fires, to a nest of clay hovels grouped around a square Steps led down this excavation, and Michael flattened against the wall when a mournful figure climbed up past him—a man with loose, white-blotched flesh and swollen lips, who grunted from a tongueless mouth. At the bottom of the steps where shadow gave a little relief from the sun squatted other foul shapes, watching with lack- luster eyes several of their companion lepers bathing in the sunken well. Hassan sought out a corner as far as possible from oO Ccomicloooks ©