he would
only lend me money at thirty per cent.'

'You frighten me always, Fakredeen, by these allusions to your affairs.
Can it be possible that they are so very bad!'

'Good, Eva, you mean good. I should be incapable of anything, if it were
not for my debts. I am naturally so indolent, that if I did not remember
in the morning that I was ruined, I should never be able to distinguish
myself.'

'You never will distinguish yourself,' said Eva; 'you never can, with
these dreadful embarrassments.'

'Shall I not?' said Fakredeen, triumphantly. 'What are my debts to my
resources? That is the point. You cannot judge of a man by only knowing
what his debts are; you must be acquainted with his resources.'

'But your estates are mortgaged, your crops sold, at least you tell me
so,' said Eva, mournfully.

'Estates! crops! A man may have an idea worth twenty estates, a
principle of action that will bring him in a greater harvest than all
Lebanon.'

'A principle of action is indeed precious,' said Eva; 'but although you
certainly have ideas, and very ingenious ones, a principle of action is
exactly the thing which I have always thought you wanted.'

'Well, I have got it at last,' said Fakredeen; 'everything comes if a
man will only wait.'

'And what is your principle of action?'

'Faith.'

'In yourself? Surely in that respect you have not hitherto been
sceptical?'

'No; in Mount Sinai.'

'In Mount Sinai!'

'You may well be astonished; but so it is. The English prince has been
to Mount Sinai, and he has seen an angel. What passed between them I
do not yet know; but one thing is certain, he is quite changed by the
interview. He is all for action: so far as I can form an opinion in the
present crude state of affairs, it is not at all impossible that he may
put himself at the head of the Asian movement. If you have faith, there
is nothing you may not do. One thing is quite settled, that he will
not at present return to Jerusalem, but, for change of air and other
reasons, make a visit with me to Canobia.'

'He seems to have great purpose in him,' said Eva, with an air of some
constraint.

'By-the-bye,' said Fakredeen, 'how came you, Eva, never to tell me that
you were acquainted with him?'

'Acquainted with him?' said Eva.

'Yes; he recognised you immediately when he recovered himself, and he
has admitted to me since that he has seen you before, though I could not
get much out of him about it. He will talk for