f the tyrants whom he sends up river. When I wrote before I knew
nothing certain but now I have eye-witnesses' testimony, and I say that
the Pasha deceives or is deceived--I hope the latter. An order from him
did stop the slaughter of women and children which Fadil Pasha was about
to effect.

To turn to less wretched matters. I will come right down Alexandria with
the boat, I shall rejoice to see you again.

Possibly the Abab'deh may come with me and I hope Sheykh Yussuf, 'my
chaplain' as Arthur Taylor called him. We shall be quite a little fleet.

April, 1865: Sir Alexander Duff Gordon

_To Sir Alexander Duff Gordon_.

_April_, 1865.

DEAREST ALEXANDER,

Yesterday was the Bairam I rejoice to say and I have lots of physic to
make up, for all the stomachs damaged by Ramadan.

I have persuaded Mr. Fowler the engineer who was with Lord Dudley to take
my dear little pupil Achmet son of Ibn Mustapha to learn the business at
Leeds instead of idling in his father's house here. I will give the
child a letter to you in case he should go to London. He has been
reading the gospels with me at his own desire. I refused till I had
asked his father's consent, and Sheykh Yussuf who heard me begged me by
all means to make him read it carefully so as to guard him against the
heretical inventions he might be beset with among the English 'of the
vulgar sort.' What a poser for a missionary!

I sent down the poor black lad with Arakel Bey. He took leave of me with
his ugly face all blubbered like a sentimental hippopotamus. He said
'for himself, he wished to stay with me, but then what would his boy, his
little master do--there was only a stepmother who would take all the
money, and who else would work for the boy?' Little Achmet was charmed
to see Khayr go, of whom he chose to be horribly jealous, and to be wroth
at all he did for me. Now the Sheykh-el-Beled of Baidyeh has carried off
my watchman, and the Christian Sheykh-el-Hara of our quarter of Luxor has
taken the boy Yussuf for the Canal. The former I successfully resisted
and got back Mansoor, not indeed _incolumes_ for _he_ had been handcuffed
and bastinadoed to make _me_ pay 200 piastres, but he bore it like a man
rather than ask me for the money and was thereupon surrendered. But the
Copt will be a tougher business--he will want more money and be more
resolved to get it. _V