ith earnest, pleading urgency,
not to be wroth with him if he remained firm and clung to the faith of
his father and his ancestors. And Amru was not wroth, though it was with
none of the hearty interest with which he had at first welcomed him,
that he hastily warned Orion to be on his guard against the prelate,
since, so long as he remained a Christian, he had no power to protect
him against Benjamin.

When Orion went on to tell him that he was intending to travel for a
short time, and had, in fact, come to take leave of him, the Arab was
much annoyed. He, too, he said, must be going away and was starting
within two days for Medina.

"And in casting my eye on you," he went on, "in spite of your youth, to
fill your father's place, I took care to find a task for you which would
enable you to prove that I had not put too great confidence in you.
But, if you persist in your own opinions, I cannot possibly entrust so
important a post as the governorship of Memphis to a Christian so
young 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