After the evening meal I reported this position
of affairs to Shir Jumla Khan.
"He only smiled gently at me.
"'Rest easy in your mind,' he said. 'Everything is understood and
arranged between me and Mustafa Khan. On the day after to-morrow our
enemies will be delivered into our hands.'
"But that night sleep would not come to my eyes. The face of the
beautiful girl haunted me, and a great longing came over me to behold
her again. I even began to hope that the conjoining of our fortunes
might bring the damsel to me, to be the joy of my life and the pride of
my future home. Already I was framing in my heart the sentences
wherewith I would plead my cause after the battle was over, both with my
grandsire and with Mustafa Khan. And I vowed that, in the fighting to
come, I would do some deed of daring that would surely win the girl's
father to my side.
"Meanwhile I wandered around the battlements, and half unconsciously I
found myself on the walls at a place that surmounted the house which
sheltered my beloved, with her mother and their women attendants, God is
my witness, but I had no thought of profane prying, contrary alike to
the laws of the Prophet and to the laws of hospitality. But my eyes fell
on a beam of light coming from a tiny window niched deep down in a
recess of the building.
Pages:
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162