ransfigured my misfortunes, making of them an
event well calculated to 'exalt our honour.' So great was my
consideration in my native country that the Queen herself had written
to the Consul-General to take care of me and see that I was not
defrauded when I bought my land. The Consul, who had been neglectful
of me, and knew nothing of the land I wished to buy, had been afraid
of the Queen's anger, hence his mad activity. I did not hear that
version at the time, nor from Rashid's own lips; but it came to my
ears eventually, after its vogue was past.

We both hoped, however, that the house and land would yet be ours.

I found the Druze chief prostrate with humiliation and bewilderment.
He greeted me with monstrous sighs, and told me how ashamed he was,
how very ill. His eyes reproached me. What had he ever done to me that
I should loose upon him such a swarm of ignominies. I felt humiliated
and ashamed before him, an honourable man who had been treated like a
rogue on my account.

'I shall not survive these insults, well I know it. I shall die,' he
kept lamenting. 'All my people know the way I have been treated--like
a dog.'

I told him that there had been a misunderstanding, and that the shame
which he had suffered had been all my fault, because I had been absent
for my selfish pleasure at the moment when I might have saved him by a
simple statement of the facts.

'I shall not easily recover,' the chief groaned. 'And then that debt
which I was so delighted to pay off is once again upon my shoulders.'

I explained then that the Consul's stopping of the sale was not
conclusive, but provisional; his only stipulation being that, before I
paid, all the legal formalities necessary to the transfer should have
been fulfilled.

'He asks no more than that your Excellency will condescend to go
before the Caimmacam with witnesses, and have a proper title-deed made
out.'

At those words, uttered in all innocence, the great man shuddered
violently and his face went green. I feared that he would have a fit,
but he recovered gradually; and at last he said: 'It is a cruel
thought, and one which must have been suggested to him by my enemies.
Know that the Caimmacam at present is my rival and most deadly foe. We
have not met on terms of speech for many years; our servants fight at
chance encounters on the road. It is but five years since I held the
post of Governor which he now occupies. When, by means of calumny and
foul intrig