all shouted to the Arab escort reports of what was going on
in Memphis, hoping to be the first to tell the homeward bound party.

How many times did Orion hear the story--and each time that a traveller
began with: "Have you heard?" pointing westward, the wounds the first
news had inflicted bled anew.

What lay beneath that mass of ashes? How much had the flames consumed
that never could be replaced! Much that he had silently wished were
possible had in fact been fulfilled--and so soon! Where now was the
burthen of great wealth which had hung about his heels and hindered his
running freely? And yet he did not, even now, feel free; the way was not
yet open before him; he secretly mourned over the ruined house of his
fathers and the wrecked home; a miserable sense of insecurity weighed
him down. No father--no mother-no parental roof! For years he had been,
in fact, perfectly independent, and yet he felt now like a pilot whose
boat had lost its rudder.

Before him lay a prison, and the closing act of the great tragedy of
which he himself had been the hero. Fate had fallen on his house, had
marked it for destruction as erewhile that of Tantalus. It lay in ashes,
and the victims were already many: two brothers, father, mother--and,
far away from home, Rufinus too.

But whose was the guilt?

It was not his ancestors who had sinned; it could only be his own
that had called down this ruin. But was there then such a power as the
Destiny of the ancients--inexorable, iron Fate? Had he not repented and
suffered, been reconciled to his Redeemer, and prepared himself to fight
the hard fight? Perhaps he was indeed to be the hero of a tragedy; then
he would show that it was not the blind Inevitable, but what a man can
make of himself, and what he can do by the aid of the God of might,
which determines his fate. If he must still succumb, it should only be
after a valiant struggle and defense. He would battle fearlessly against
every foe, would press onward in the path he had laid down for himself.
His heart beat high once more; he felt as though he could see his
father's example as a guiding star in the sky, so that he must be true
to that whether to live or to die. And when he turned his eye earthwards
again, still, even there, he had that which made it seem worth the cost
of enduring the pangs of living and the brunt of the hardest battle:
Paula and her love.

The nearer he approached Fostat, the more ardently his heart swelled