Marker speedily left the broader streets of the European quarter, and
plunged down a steep alley which led to the stream. Half way down there
was a lane to the left in the line of hovels, and, after stopping a
moment to consider, he entered this. It was narrow and dark, but smelt
cleanly enough of the dry granite sand. There were little dark
apertures in the huts, which might have been either doors or windows,
and at one of these he stopped, lit a match, and examined it closely.
The result was satisfactory; for the man, who had hitherto been
crouching, straightened himself up and knocked. The door opened
instantaneously, and he bowed his tall head to enter a narrow passage.
This brought him into a miniature courtyard, about thirty feet across,
above which gleamed a patch of violet sky, sown with stars. Below a
door on the right a light shone, and this he pushed open, and entered a
little room.
The place was richly furnished, with low couches and Persian tables, and
on the floor a bright matting. The short, square-set man sitting
smoking on the divan we have already met at a certain village in the
mountains. Fazir Khan, descendant of Abraham, and father and chief of
the Bada-Mawidi, has a nervous eye and an uneasy face to-night, for it
is a hard thing for a mountaineer, an inhabitant of great spaces, to sit
with composure in a trap-like room in the citadel of a foe who has many
acts of rape and murder to avenge on his body.
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