Say I not well?"
"It is well said," replied I; "and God is great."
"You will find the money right," said she. "Count it."
I counted it, and returned it into the goat-skin bag. "It is all right.
Leave me, woman, for I must go in."
The old woman left me, returning thanks to Allah that her money was
safe, but from certain ideas running in my mind, I very _much doubted
the fact_. I sat down full of doubts. I doubted if the old woman had
come honestly by the money; and whether I should give it to the head
dervish. I doubted whether I ought to retain it for myself, and whether
I might not come to mischief. I also had my doubts----
* * * * *
"I have no doubt," interrupted Mustapha, "but that you kept it for
yourself. Say--is it not so?"
* * * * *
Even so did my doubts resolve into that fact. I settled it in my mind,
that seven hundred sequins, added to about four hundred still in my
possession, would last some time, and that I was tired of the life of a
howling dervish. I therefore set up one last long final howl to let my
senior know that I was present, and then immediately became absent. I
hastened to the bazaar, and purchasing here and there--at one place a
vest, at another a shawl, and at another a turban--I threw off my dress
of a dervish, hastened to the bath, and after a few minutes under the
barber, came out like a butterfly from its dark shell. No one would have
recognised in the spruce young Turk, the filthy dervish.
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