At that word there-was silence for a moment, while Ben Aboo shifted in his seat, and Katrina quivered beside him.

Ben Aboo glanced up at Mohammed.  He was Kaid, he was Basha, he was master of all men within a circuit of thirty miles, but he was afraid of this man whom the people called a prophet.  And partly out of this fear, and partly because he had more regard to Mohammed’s courageous behaviour in thus bearding him in his Kasbah and by the walls of his dungeons than to the anger his hot word had caused him, Ben Aboo would have promised him at that moment that the prisoners at Shawan should be released.

But suddenly Katrina remembered that she also had cause of indignation against this man, for it had been rumoured of late that Mohammed had openly denounced her marriage.

“Wait, Sidi,” she said.  “Is not this the fellow that has gone up and down your bashalic, crying out on our marriage that it was against the law of Mohammed?”

At that Ben Aboo saw clearly that there was no escape for him, so he made pretence to laugh again, and said, “Allah! so it is!  Mohammed the Third, eh?  Son of Mequinez, God will repay you!  Thanks!  Thanks!  You could never think how long I’ve waited that I might look face to face upon the prophet that has denounced a Kaid.”

He uttered these big words between bursts of derisive laughter, but Mohammed struck the laughter from his lips in an instant.  “Wait no longer, O Ben Aboo,” he cried, “but look upon him now, and know that what you have done is an unclean thing, and you shall be childless and die!”

Then Ben Aboo’s passion mastered him.  He rose to his feet in his anger, and cried, “Prophet, you have destroyed yourself.  Listen to me!  The turbulent dogs you plead for shall lie in their prison until they perish of hunger and rot of their sores.  By the beard of my father, I swear it!”

Mohammed did not flinch.  Throwing back his head, he answered, “If I am a prophet, O Ben Aboo hear me prophesy.  Before that which you say shall come to pass, both you and your father’s house will be destroyed.  Never yet did a tyrant go happily out of the world, and you shall go out of it like a dog.”

Then Katrina also rose to her feet, and, calling to a group of barefooted Arab soldiers that stood near, she cried, “Take him!  He will escape!”

But the soldiers did not move, and Ben Aboo fell back on his seat, and Mohammed, fearing nothing, spoke again.

“In a vision of last night I saw you, O Ben Aboo and for the contempt you had cast upon our holy laws, and for the destruction you had wrought on our poor people, the sword of vengeance had fallen upon you.  And within this very court, and on that very spot where your feet now rest, your whole body did lie; and that woman beside you lay over you wailing and your blood was on her face and on her hands, and only she was with you, for all else had forsaken you—­all save one, and that was your enemy, and he had come to see you with his eyes, and to rejoice over you with his heart, because you were fallen and dead.”