For days he shut himself up in his palace.  Then, having overheard a conversation in his garden between two eunuchs—­placed there for that purpose—­ he got together a few belongings, took his faithful caique-ji, and travelled a-field.  If what he had heard was true she was in or near Damascus.  Here would he go.  If, after searching every nook and cranny, he failed to find her, he would return and carry out his sovereign’s commands and marry the princess—­a woman he had never laid his eyes on and who might be as ugly as sin and as misshapen as Yuleima was beautiful.  It was while engaged in this fruitless search that he met Joseph, to whom he had poured out his heart (so Joe assured me, with his hand on his shirt-front), hoping to enlist his sympathies and thus gain his assistance.

All this time the heartbroken girl, rudely awakened from her dream of bliss, was a prisoner in the deserted house next the mosque.  As the dreary months went by her skin regained its pinkness and her beautiful hair its golden tint,—­walnut shells and cosmetics not being found in the private toilet of the priests and their companions.  When the summer came a greater privilege was given her.  She could never speak to any one and no one could speak to her—­even the priests knew this—­but a gate opening into the high-walled garden was left unlocked now and then by one of the kind-hearted Mohammedans, and often she would wander as far as the end of the wall overlooking the Mosque of Suleiman, her attendant always with her—­a black woman appointed by Chief-of-Police Selim, and responsible for her safety, and who would pay forfeit with her head if Yuleima escaped.

“And you think now, effendi,” concluded Joe, as he drained his last cup of coffee (Hornstog’s limit was twenty cups at intervals of three minutes each), “that Joe be big damn fool to put his foots in this—­ what you call—­steel trap?  No, no, we keep away.  To-morrow, don’t it, we take Yusuf and go Scutari?  One beautiful fountain at Scutari like you never see!”

“But can’t her father help?” I asked, ignoring his suggestion.  His caution did not interest me.  It was the imprisoned girl and her suffering that occupied my thoughts.

“Yes, perhaps, but not yet.  I somethings hear one day from the gardener who live with her father, but maybe it all lie.  He say Serim come and say—­” Again Joe chafed his thumb and forefinger, after the manner of the paying teller.  “Maybe ten thousand piastres—­maybe twenty.  Her father would pay, of course, only the Sultan might not like—­then worse trouble—­nothing will be done anyhow until the wedding is over.  Then, perhaps, some time.”

I did not go to Scutari the next day.  I opened my easel in the patio of the Pigeon Mosque and started in to paint the plaza with Cleopatra’s Needle in the distance.  This would occupy the morning.  In the afternoon I would finish my sketch of Suleiman.  Should Joe have a fresh attack of ague he could join Yusuf at the cafe and forget it in the thimbelful that cheers but does not inebriate.