immoral, was he?
Then what should be said of those who set such ripe and tempting fruit
before a youth of the ravenous age, simply to punish him if he made a
bite? Ah, they were moral, doubtless! But Our Lady Miriam and the
Host of Heaven thought otherwise, they might be sure!

And if, in the month which had elapsed since then, he had turned his
back on prayer-meetings and haunted taverns of the town, whose fault
was that? His new associates were not depraved. Their only crime was
that they were not Protestants. Even Elias Abdul Messih, the cause of
all this outcry, was a respectable man, only scatter-brained and
light-hearted. He was a Christian, not a Muslim or an idolater, so
what was there to justify such bitter chiding?

The missionaries called it a crime in Iskender that he idled abroad,
trying to make a likeness of the things he saw with his pencils and
paints--the gift of the Sitt Hilda, mark that well! It was all their
own doing, yet so wrong! Did he smoke a cigarette, it was a sin! Did
he call in talk upon the name of Allah--a sin most deadly! . . .

"Peace on this house!" said a man's complacent voice at the doorway.

Still on her knees, the mother of Iskender turned and peered at the
disturber, pressing both hands to her temples. In her confusion on the
start the greeting gave her she failed at first to recognise the figure
standing forth against the sand-glare, which, now that evening drew on,
had the colour of ripe wheat.

"O mother of Iskender, how is thy health to-day?" pursued the visitor;
and then she knew him for the brother of her dead husband.

"Is it thyself, Abdullah?" She rose up to greet him. "My soul has
grief this day on account of Iskender. They treat him shamefully over
yonder--worse than a dog!"

Abdullah rejected her offer of the only chair in favour of a cushion by
the wall. He was an elderly man of most respectable appearance, being
clad in a blue zouave jacket and pantaloons, both finely braided, a
crimson sash at his waist, and on his head a low-crowned fez with long
blue tassel hanging to the neck. He wore top boots and held a whip,
though he had not come riding. The skin of his face had withered in
loose folds, leaving the bushy grey moustache and brows unduly
prominent, a crowd of wrinkles round his large brown eyes giving an
effect of intelligence to orbs whose real expression was a calm
stupidity in keeping with the general dignity of his demeanour.

"Eve