Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-13.pdf/220

And made the sexless things, like healing crones,
Peer in his eyes for shivers haply left.
But when he felt at ease, once more his thoughts
Turned on the Pacha and a needed pipe.
Yet bleeding from his face, he stuffed the bowl,
Careless through terror, placed a coal atop,
And, vainly striving to out-run his fears,
Fled with his burden to the fair kiosk.
The Pacha was not there! With burning eyes
He scanned the shadow cast by every tree:
No sign of Halil Pacha; not a wreath
Escaping faintly from his dying pipe.
"Great Allah!" shrieked the lad; for there he sat,
His almost god, beneath the leaning wall;
And carelessly, as one absorbed in thought,
The Pacha with a mattock in his hand—
For all the ground was strown with idle tools—
Was picking at the huge foundation-stones
That propped the wall. Before the quailing sight
Of the fear-stricken boy, his master seemed
A helpless instrument in fortune's hands,
Working a purpose out against himself
With blind devotion; pulling ruin down,
As by conception, on his very head.
Choking a cry that wellnigh broke his heart,
The stripling bounded headlong toward the spot.
But ere three steps were taken, all the air
Was filled with dust and clamor, and the wall
Yawned, and he saw the widow's house beyond
Staring with peopled windows through the rift;
And next he saw the Pacha where he lay
Covered with ruins, caught by both his legs,
Alive, and struggling to be free; and then
A mighty fragment of the coping-stone,
From off the wall yet standing, edgewise fell;
And where the sword of Justice cleaves the neck,
Just 'twixt the head and shoulders, struck his lord,—
And all was ended! Groveling on his knees,
Ten paces from the Pacha, sank the boy,
And bowed his head toward Mecca as in prayer,
Exclaiming, "Kismet, kismet!"—it is fate.

George H. Boker.