“Devoutly remembering the signal mercies shown to me by Allah in this last short day, I determined to follow the same course as I had when my good fortune came to me--to lie passive under the Mighty Hand directing me and to trust to luck.
“I took some sleep in the night beside my fire, but hardly had I awakened at dawn when I was aware of a group approaching me through the forest track. They were a party of a dozen or so, half of them on foot, half of them mounted; of no great consequence if one might judge by their clothing, which, my dear nephews, is in most occasions in life the signal by which we may know whether to revere men or to despise them. Both beasts and humans in this group were travel-stained as having come from some great distance.
“As I saw them before they saw me, I naturally took the precaution of creeping up behind them through the trees in order to overhear the object of their journey. It appeared that they were bound on pilgrimage to the shrine of a Most Holy Man, to obtain his oracle in a matter which concerned their miserable village.
“My mind was at once made up. I ran back by a circuitous course through the trees, came to a place ahead of their progress, and there, spreading my little mat upon the sward, I prostrated myself in prayer. Indeed, I was thus able to kill two birds with one stone, for I had not yet said those morning prayers of the True Believer which I had never omitted in all my life, save when I happened to be flying from justice and therefore deprived of leisure.
“As I heard them coming up behind me I raised my head and voice at once, and fell into a perfect ecstasy of worship, which did not fail to impress the simple mountaineers. They halted respectfully until I saw fit to terminate my conversation with the Most High. I pretended to be so absorbed in my contemplation of divine things as not to notice them: for to keep them waiting secured religious as well as worldly respect. They approached me with deference and even awe. I told them I was bound for the shrine of a Most Holy Man whose name I gave them. They were overjoyed to discover that they had a companion filled with the same sentiments as themselves.
“‘We also,’ said their leader, ‘are engaged upon the same sacred mission. For we have been informed by a messenger (whom we dispatched a month ago from our village) that the Saint will graciously receive us and give us a reply upon a doubtful matter of wild hedge-pigs which has greatly excited our tribe, whether they be pork or no.’