very ready to accept it; and he announced with
such fiery eloquence his determination to give shelter at Fostat to the
natives whom the conflagration had left roofless, he was so fair-spoken,
and he had shown his great qualities in so clear a light during the past
night, that they agreed to postpone their attainder and await the reply
from Medina to the complaints they had forwarded. Discipline, indeed,
required that they should submit; and many a man who would have flown to
meet death on the field as a bride, quailed before the terrible
adventurer who would not shrink from the most hideous deeds.

Obada had won by hard fighting. No one could prove a theft against him of
so much as a single drachma; but he nevertheless had to take many a rough
word, and with one consent the assembly refused him the deference justly
due to the governor's representative.

Bitterly indignant, he remained till the very last in the
council-chamber, no one staying with him, not even his own subalterns, to
speak a soothing word in praise of the power and eloquence of his
address, while the same cursed wretches would, under similar
circumstances, have buzzed round Amru like swarming bees, and have
escorted him home like curs wagging their tails. He ascribed the
contumely and opposition he met with to their prejudice, as haughty,
free-born men against his birth, and not to any fault of his own, and yet
he looked down on them all, feeling himself the superior of each by
himself; if the blow in Medina were successful, he would pick out his
victims, and then. . . .

His dreams of vengeance were abruptly broken by a messenger, covered with
dust from head to foot; he brought good news: Orion was taken and safely
bestowed in the Kadi's house.

"And why not in mine?" asked Obada in peremptory tones. "Who is the
governor's representative here. Othman or I? Take the prisoner to my
house."

And he forthwith went home. But instead of the prisoner there presently
appeared before him an official of the Kadi's household, who informed
him, from his master, that as the Khaliff had constituted Othman supreme
judge in Egypt this matter was in his hands; if Obada wished to see the
prisoner he might go to the Kadi's residence, or visit him later in the
town prison of Memphis, whither Orion would presently be transferred.

He rushed off, raging, to his enemy's house, but his stormy fury was met
by the placidity of a calm and judicial mind. Othman was a man bet