ove of Allah, to make haste.

"O my terror, my despair!" she wailed. "All the slaves of power are
out in search of thee. They have been here already, threatening me
with torture. And the missionaries also have been here each day,
maligning thee, and forcing me to join the hue and cry. They have spat
their venom also on Abdullah, thy paternal uncle, even blackening his
face with Kuk! The poor good man has been forced to return to his
drunkenness. Have I not grief enough already that thou must needs fly
hither and increase my terrors? What ailed thee to mislead the young
Emir? I warrant thou hast made no profit by it. And that fine
treasure written to thy name, predestined for thee, hast brought back
any of it, luckless boy?"

"I missed the way, O my mother. The Emir fell ill; we were captured by
the Bedu; all things warred against me."

"So I could have told thee! It is a judgment on thee for keeping
secrets from thy loving mother! . . . For the love of Christ, make
haste, have done with eating. If Costantin or one of the ladies were
to catch thee here, or if the soldiers come and slay thee before my
eyes!"

Something of her anxiety communicated itself to him. With the rest of
the food in his hands he departed hastily. But after running for,
perhaps, a hundred paces, he shrugged his shoulders and resigned his
cause to Allah. On all hands homely objects wooed his gaze: a lone
fig-tree down in a hollow, among whose branches he had perched and
dreamed as a small boy; the path, now scarce defined, by which he went
to school, choosing always to rush up the steepest part of the dune
through excess of energy; the tamarisks round the Mission, and its high
red roof; minarets and a dome of the town peering above the dark green
wave of gardens. All looked so pleasant in the early sunlight, it
forbade him to feel concern for his own fortunes. Even though, by
cruel misconstruction of his motives, he were disgraced for life, all
this remained to him. In attaching his desires to this he ran no risk
of being wounded, as he had been by the human things he sought to love.

Strolling thus in reverie, he came upon the house of Mitri with
surprise. The thought of the priest as a protector at once occurred to
him; for Mitri was a favourite with the Muslim rulers, and the Orthodox
Patriarch, his ecclesiastical head, could oppose a power almost
consular to any attempt to persecute a member of his flock.

On the sunlit