ill make thy cause my own."

For the first time since their meeting in the church, the priest here
smiled.

"I swear it," said Iskender; "though Allah knows I care not what
becomes of me. I pray thee, tell my uncle Abdullah what I have told to
thee, that his mind may be healed."

"That is useless, O my son; for I have reasoned with him. His grief is
neither for thy deeds nor what is said of thee, but for some words
thrown at him by the English missionary. He set such store by his
respectability and the esteem in which the Franks all held him, that
now, in his humiliation, none but Allah can relieve his mind."

While thus expounding, the priest took up his staff and exchanged his
thin house slippers for stout walking ones. With the last words he
departed, bidding Iskender wait till he returned.

The youth sat still in dejection, hypnotised by the bright edge of
sunlight on the threshold, seeing nothing else. He believed himself
alone, when a hand touched one of his--a hand as cool and lissom as a
serpent's skin. The daughter of Mitri knelt on the ground beside him.
She kissed his hand, and pressed it to her childish bosom.

"May Allah comfort thee!" she whispered. "Look not so miserable, I
entreat thee, for it makes me cry. When my father sent my mother out,
I hid behind the oven, and so heard thy tale. If it is true, thou
didst well; and if it is false, I care not, thou didst well! Praise to
Allah, thou art no longer a Brutestant; thou art one of us, and I can
call thee brother."

Up to this point her voice was full of love; but when, awake at last,
he tried to draw her to him, she cursed his ancestry and broke away.
She had supposed him quite disabled by misfortune. Running fast across
the space of sunlight, she sat down in the shade of the oak-tree, where
he could still see her in the frame of the doorway, and fell to singing
softly to herself.

She was still sitting there, at play with some glass beads, when her
father returned.

CHAPTER XXIV

"Praise be to Allah!" exclaimed Mitri, striding in and sitting down
beside Iskender. As soon as he recovered breath, he told his story.

He had seen the secretary of the caimmacam, and from him had learnt
that the English consul was Iskender's chief accuser. Having no
influence to oppose to so powerful an adversary except that of the
Patriarch, Mitri had decided in his mind to make appeal to His
Beatitude, who was sure to feel kindly disposed to