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her off, safe for another week.
    The crowd was thinning now, and Hamid could spot his sister sitting in a sad little heap beside her master. She was in disgrace because she had fallen asleep, and Hamid was impatient to rescue her.
    The mosque was the village temple—a building with a square tower dazzling white against the blue sky. A golden crescent gleamed from the top.
    At last the old bearded priest appeared and sent his chanted call ringing out across the marketplace.“There is one God,” he cried, “and Mohammed is his prophet.”
    Faithful Muslims flocked to the temple or took off their shoes and prayed where they stood, facing east, bowing low, and sometimes kneeling with their foreheads on the ground.
    The moment Hamid caught sight of the priest, he raced across the market, kissed the old beggar’s hand in greeting, and snatched up his little sister.
    He had brought her a doughnut. She clutched it eagerly and took a mouthful. In the joy of feeling his arms safe about her once more, she forgot all about the hunger and thirst and weariness of that long day and nestled her head into his neck, crooning with delight. Her tired little body relaxed and she fell fast asleep, as she had been longing to do for the past three hours. Hamid, a little bent from the dead weight of her, wandered home along the river path in the sweltering heat.
    He rested for a while under a fig tree, watching the river where the women were washing their clothes and the cows cooled their feet. He wondered where the river went. One day he would find out for himself.
    Once again, as night fell, the family gathered around the clay bowl and ate their supper by firelight and candlelight. Kinza, refreshed from her sleep, sat on her mother’s lap, flushed and bright-eyed, opening her mouth for food like a hungry baby bird. Hamid watched her, loving her and remembering the pressure of her weary little body against his back. Always, always, he would protect her and make her happy.
    The cows munched in the shed, and an old dog with a torn ear wandered in and lay down with his head on Rahma’s lap. Moths and bats flitted in and out, and the cat crept up and stuck her head into the clay pot to have supper with the family.
    Hamid, tired from his climb, lay down to sleep. He dreamed that the terrifying old beggar stood between him and Kinza. Suddenly he woke to find that the moon had risen and the grown-ups were still sitting talking around the dead charcoal.
    In the silver beams he could see their faces clearly—his stepfather grim and determined, Fatima cruelly pleased, and his mother pale and pleading.
    “It is the only offer we shall ever get for her,” said Si Mohamed fiercely. “She will be looked after for life.”
    “Life!” cried his mother bitterly. “There will be no life! She will die—she is so little and so weak.”
    “A blind child is better dead!” remarked Fatima.
    Zohra turned angrily on the old woman, but the man silenced them both by raising his hand.
    “Silence, you foolish women!” he ordered. “Let there be no more talk about this. The child must come with me three days from now at dawn.”
    He rose grandly, like a king, and Fatima rose too. But Zohra stayed crouched by the dead fire, rocking herself to and fro in the moonlight.
    “Little daughter! Little daughter!” she murmured brokenly to herself, and Hamid lay quite still and watched her. He dared not speak or go to her for fear of waking his stepfather. But his hot little heart beat very fast, and his mind was completely made up.
    It shall not be!
he said to himself over and over again.
I will not let her go. It shall not be!
    He watched his mother creep away at last and lie down sorrowfully to sleep. He watched the pale patch of moonlight move across the doorway and rest on the cradle where Kinza lay dreaming. He saw the pale summer dawn begin to break and heard the first rooster crow—and all the time he lay thinking, thinking, thinking. But his thinking got him