it true that the Emir gives thee an English pound every day?"
inquired Yuhanna.

"He is good enough to treat me as a brother, and has sworn, of his
benevolence, to make my fortune," Iskender modestly admitted.

"Pshaw! Promises--I know them!" sneered Yuhanna. "Coined money is the
only thing I put my faith in."

"We crave a boon of thee," pursued Elias coaxingly. "Bring the
khawajah to the house of Karlsberger to-morrow afternoon. We will make
a feast in his honour and thine. Say yes, O my soul!"

"Aye, promise," snarled Yuhanna, "or we shall know thou hast a mind to
slight us, and take steps accordingly."

Iskender promised, with intent to fail them, for the Emir's protection
made their threat quite harmless. He pursued his way down a sandy road
through the orange-gardens, which looked black beneath the sunset--of
unusual splendour owing to the presence in the sky of ragged clouds. A
fellah who passed remarked that rain was coming.

"Art on the way to visit me?" A hand fell suddenly upon Iskender's
shoulder. A tall black-clad form had overtaken him, unheard by reason
of the muffling sand. It was the priest Mitri. "Or dost thou fear to
incur the anger of the English missionaries? By Allah, thou art wrong
to fear them. Their religion is of man's devising; its aim is worldly
comfort, which will fail them at the Last Day; whereas ours is the
faith of Christ and the Holy Apostles, the same for which thy fathers
suffered ages before the invention of the Brutestant heresy. It is the
faith of the true Romans who reigned in the city of Costantin, when
Rome had reaped the reward of her heathen iniquity and lay in ruins, a
haunt of brigands and wild beasts. Is it not a sin that, after the
lapse of so many ages, people calling themselves Christians, people who
have never suffered hardship for their faith as we do, come hither and
wage war upon the Church in her bound and crippled state, seducing the
feeble and the avaricious by the spectacle of their wealth and the
prospect of foreign protection? These heretics--and the Muscovites,
our co-religionists, alas! with them--conspire against the Sultan, who
is our sole defender. With the Muslimin we have in common language,
country, and the intercourse of daily life. Therefore, I say, a Muslim
is less abominable before Allah than a Latin or a Brutestant."

The priest stopped speaking suddenly and embraced Iskender, kissing him
repeatedly on both cheeks. At the