s a welcome guest, and they certainly did
not seem to be poor. The house was spacious, and though it was old and
unpretentious it was comfortable and furnished with artistic taste. The
garden had amazed her by the care lavished on it; she had seen a
hump-backed gardener and several children at work in it. A strange
party-for every one of them, like their chief, was in some way deformed
or crippled.

The plot of ground--which extended towards the river to the road-way for
foot passengers, vehicles and the files of men towing the Nile-boats--was
but narrow, and bounded on either side by extensive premises. Not far
from the spot where it lay nearest to the river was the bridge of boats
connecting Memphis with the island of Rodah. To the right was the
magnificent residence--a palace indeed--belonging to Susannah; to the
left was an extensive grove, where tall palms, sycamores with spreading
foliage, and dense thickets of blue-green tamarisk trees cast their
shade. Above this bower of splendid shrubs and ancient trees rose a long,
yellow building crowned with a turret; and this too was not unknown to
her, for she had often heard it spoken of in her uncle's house, and had
even gone there now and then escorted by Perpetua. It was the convent of
St. Cecilia, the refuge of the last nuns of the orthodox creed left in
Memphis; for, though all the other sisterhoods of her confession had long
since been banished, these had been allowed to remain in their old home,
not only because they were famous sick-nurses, a distinction common to
all the Melchite orders, but even more because the decaying municipality
could not afford to sacrifice the large tax they annually paid to it.
This tax was the interest on a considerable capital bequeathed to the
convent by a certain wise predecessor of the Mukaukas', with the prudent
proviso, ratified under the imperial seal of Theodosius II., that if the
convent were at any time broken up, this endowment, with the land and
buildings which it likewise owed to the generosity of the same
benefactor, should become the property of the Christian emperor at that
time reigning.

Mukaukas George, notwithstanding his well-founded aversion for everything
Melchite, had taken good care not to press this useful Sisterhood too
hardly, or to deprive his impoverished capital of its revenues only to
throw them into the hands of the wealthy Moslems. The title-deed on which
the Sisters relied was good; and the governor,