When Orion went on to tell him that he was intending to travel for a short time, and had, in fact, come to take leave of him, the Arab was much annoyed.  He, too, he said, must be going away and was starting within two days for Medina.

“And in casting my eye on you,” he went on, “in spite of your youth, to fill your father’s place, I took care to find a task for you which would enable you to prove that I had not put too great confidence in you.  But, if you persist in your own opinions, I cannot possibly entrust so important a post as the governorship of Memphis to a Christian so young as you are; with the youthful Moslem I might have ventured on it.—­However, I will not deprive you of the enterprise which I had intended for you.  If you succeed in it, it will be a good thing for yourself, and I can, I believe, turn it to the benefit of the whole province—­for what could take me from hence at this time, when my presence is so needful for a hundred incomplete projects, but my anxiety for the good of this country—­in which I am but an alien, while you must love it as your native soil, the home of your race?—­I am going to Medina because the Khaliff, in this letter, complains that I send too small a revenue into the treasury from so rich a land as Egypt.  And yet not a single dinar of your taxes finds its way into my own coffers.  I keep a hundred and fifty thousand laborers at work to restore the canals and waterworks which my predecessors, the blood-sucking Byzantines, neglected so disgracefully and left to fall to ruin—­I build, and plan, and sow seed for posterity to reap.  All this costs money.  It swallows up the lion’s share of the revenue.  And I am making the journey, not merely to purge myself from reproach, but to obtain Omar’s permission for the future to exact no extortionate payments, but to consider only the true weal of the province.  I am most unwilling to go, for a thousand reasons; and you, young man, if you care for your native land, ought. . . .  Do you really love it and wish it well?”

“With all my soul!” cried Orion.

“Well then, at this time, if by any possibility you can arrange it so, you ought to remain at home, and devote yourself heart and soul to the task I have to propose to you.  I hate postponements.  Ride straight at the foe, and do not canter up and down till you tire the horses! that is my principle, and not in battle only.  Take the moral to heart!—­And you will have no time to waste; what I require is no light matter:  It is that you should endeavor to sketch a new division of the districts, drawing on your own knowledge of the country and its inhabitants, and using the records and lists in the archives of your ancient government-offices, of which your father has told me; you must have special regard to the financial condition of each district.  That the old mode of levying taxes is unsatisfactory we find every day; you will have ample room for improvements in every respect.  Overthrow the existing arrangements,