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ZARAH THE CRUEL
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ZARAH THE CRUEL
BY
JOAN CONQUEST
AUTHOR OF “DESERT LOVE,” “LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE,”
“THE HAWK OF EGYPT.”
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
Copyright, 1923, by
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
Printed in the U. S. A.
TO
BETTY C—— OF C——
TO WHOM I AM INDEBTED FOR SO MUCH OF THIS BOOK
“Narrower than the ear of a needle.”—Arabic Proverb.
The Holy Man, motionless, gaunt, his eyes filled withthe peace of Allah, the one and only God, stood afar off,outlined against the moonlight, watching two horsemenfleeing for their lives across the desert.
Pursued by a band of Arabs which hunted them formurder done in the far, fair City of Damascus and hadhunted them throughout the Peninsula, they headed forthe Mountains of Death towering in the limitless sandsof the burning desert and cut off from the world bythe silvery belt of quicksands which surround themcompletely.
Uninhabited by beast or human being within the memoryof man and the memory of his fathers, and his fathers’fathers, yet did the wandering story-teller, as he flittedfrom town to village, from Bedouin camp to verdant oasis,make song or story of the legend which has clung to thepile of volcanic rock throughout the centuries.
A story which either moved the listener to shouts ofderisive, unbelieving laughter or held him still, lost inwonderment and dreams.
A legend recounted in this day of grace by the Arabianstory-teller to Bedouins, sitting entranced under the starsor the moon, yet which had been inscribed upon a highlydecorated vellum by the Holy Palladius in the fifth centuryof our Lord, which record of early holy church[10]was lost in the burning and