So they were happy, for to them this was a night of festival, to be followed by a morrow of still greater festival, when their sultan and their god took to himself this stranger beauty as a wife.

Doubtless, too, he would soon weary of her, and they would be called together to see her cast from some topmost tower and hear her frail bones break on the cruel rocks below, or--as had happened to the last queen--to watch her writhe out her life in the pangs of poison upon a charge of sorcery.

It was indeed a night of festival, a night filled full of promise of rich joys to come.
On rode the brethren, with stern, impassive faces, but wondering in their hearts whether they would live to see another dawn.

The shouting crowd surged round them, breaking through the circle of their guards.

A hand was thrust up to Godwin; in it was a letter, which he took and read by the bright moonlight.