fire.  Obada had done all this to clear out of his path the hated man whose statements and impeachments might ruin him.  The wretch had met a less ignominious death than his judges would have granted him.  The wealth found hoarded in his dwelling was sent to Medina; and even Orion was forced to see the vast sums of which the Negro had plundered his treasury, appropriated by the Arabs.  The Arab governor thought it only right to inflict this penalty for the share he had taken in the rescue of the nuns; and the young man submitted willingly to a punishment which restored him and his bride to freedom, and enabled Amru to apply a larger proportion of the revenues of his native land for its own benefit.

The Khaliff Omar, however, never received these moneys, which constituted far more than half of Orion’s patrimony.  The Prophet’s truest friend, the wise and powerful ruler, fell by the assassin’s hand, and the world now learnt that the Vekeel had been one of the chief conspirators and had been spurred on to the rashest extremes by his confidence of success.

Amru received the son of the Mukaukas as a father might; after examining the result of his labors he found it far superior to his own efforts in the same direction, and he charged Orion to carry out the new division of the country, which he confirmed excepting in a few details.

“Perform your duty and do your utmost in the future to go on as you have begun!” cried Amru; and the young man replied: 

“In this bitter and yet happy interval I have become clear on many points.”

“And may I ask on what?” asked the governor.  “I would gladly hear.”

“I have discovered, my lord,” replied Orion, “that there is no such thing as happiness or unhappiness in the sense men give to the words.  Life appears to each of us as we ourselves paint it.  Hard times which come into our lives from outside are often no more than a brief night from which a brighter day presently dawns—­or the stab of a surgeon’s knife, which makes us sounder than before.  What men call grief is, times without number, a path to greater ease; whereas the ordinary happiness of mankind flows, swiftly as running waters, down from that delightful sense of ease.  Like a ship, which, when her rudder is lost, is more likely to ride out the storm on the high seas than near the sheltering coast, so a man who has lost himself may easily recover himself and his true happiness in the wildest turmoil of life, but rarely and with difficulty if his existence runs calmly on.  All other blessings are comparatively worthless if we are not upheld by the consciousness of fulfilling the task of life in faithful earnest, and of cheerfully dealing with the problems it sets before us.  The lost one was found as soon as he placed his whole being and faculties at the service of a higher duty, with God in his heart and before his eyes.  I have learnt from my own experience, and from Paula’s good friends, to strive untiringly after what is right, and to find my own weal in that of others.