When the Arab was at last admitted to the governor's presence his attendants unfolded a hanging before him.

The giant Masdakite did the chief share of the work; but as soon as the Mukaukas caught sight of the big man, with his bushy, mane-like hair, and a dagger and a battle-axe stuck through his belt, he cried out: "Away, away with him! That man--those weapons--I will not look at the hanging till he is gone." His hands were trembling, and the merchant at once desired his faithful Rustem, the most harmless of mortals, to quit the room.

The governor, whose sensitive nerves had been liable to such attacks of panic ever since an exiled Greek had once attempted to murder him, now soon recovered his composure, and looked with great admiration at the hanging round which the family were standing.

They all confessed they had never seen anything like it, and the vivacious Dame Susannah proposed to send for her daughter and her visitors; but it was already late, and her house was so far from the governor's that she gave that up.

The father and son had already heard of this marvellous piece of work, which had formed part of the plunder taken by the Arab conquerors of the Persian Empire at the sack of the "White Tower"-- the royal palace of Madam, the capital of the Sassanidze.