noon
That night , returning home , he snatched the sacred picture from its shelf and trod it under foot , to his wife 's terror . Southward and eastward rode Iskender with his loved Emîr . Crags succeeded crags ; the sky was turquoise . At noon the very gorges held no shade ; but in the morning and the evening there were halls of coolness , while the sunlight made the heights as bright as flower-beds . Wild-flowers shone everywhere among the rocks ; and in the open places blew wide fields of them . Whenever they came to a village , and pitched their tent beside the well , the inhabitants bustled out to do them service in return for stale scraps of news from the outer world ; and Iskender told them of the greatness and the power of his Emîr , till they esteemed it a rich reward merely to peep through the hangings of the tent at such a potentate . Even supposing that they never found the Valley of the Kings , this ramble together through delightful solitudes was worth the money spent , it seemed to him .