g
as you are; with the youthful Moslem I might have ventured on
it.--However, I will not deprive you of the enterprise which I had
intended for you. If you succeed in it, it will be a good thing for
yourself, and I can, I believe, turn it to the benefit of the whole
province--for what could take me from hence at this time, when my
presence is so needful for a hundred incomplete projects, but my anxiety
for the good of this country--in which I am but an alien, while you must
love it as your native soil, the home of your race?--I am going to Medina
because the Khaliff, in this letter, complains that I send too small a
revenue into the treasury from so rich a land as Egypt. And yet not a
single dinar of your taxes finds its way into my own coffers. I keep a
hundred and fifty thousand laborers at work to restore the canals and
waterworks which my predecessors, the blood-sucking Byzantines, neglected
so disgracefully and left to fall to ruin--I build, and plan, and sow
seed for posterity to reap. All this costs money. It swallows up the
lion's share of the revenue. And I am making the journey, not merely to
purge myself from reproach, but to obtain Omar's permission for the
future to exact no extortionate payments, but to consider only the true
weal of the province. I am most unwilling to go, for a thousand reasons;
and you, young man, if you care for your native land, ought. . . . Do you
really love it and wish it well?"

"With all my soul!" cried Orion.

"Well then, at this time, if by any possibility you can arrange it so,
you ought to remain at home, and devote yourself heart and soul to the
task I have to propose to you. I hate postponements. Ride straight at the
foe, and do not canter up and down till you tire the horses! that is my
principle, and not in battle only. Take the moral to heart!--And you will
have no time to waste; what I require is no light matter: It is that you
should endeavor to sketch a new division of the districts, drawing on
your own knowledge of the country and its inhabitants, and using the
records and lists in the archives of your ancient government-offices, of
which your father has told me; you must have special regard to the
financial condition of each district. That the old mode of levying taxes
is unsatisfactory we find every day; you will have ample room for
improvements in every respect. Overthrow the existing arrangements, if
you consider it necessary. Other men have attempted to redistr