The Kadi spoke frankly and fearlessly against his recent proceedings, declaring in the name of every member of the Divan, that they disclaimed all responsibility for what had been done, and that it rested on the Vekeel alone.  Obada was very ready to accept it; and he announced with such fiery eloquence his determination to give shelter at Fostat to the natives whom the conflagration had left roofless, he was so fair-spoken, and he had shown his great qualities in so clear a light during the past night, that they agreed to postpone their attainder and await the reply from Medina to the complaints they had forwarded.  Discipline, indeed, required that they should submit; and many a man who would have flown to meet death on the field as a bride, quailed before the terrible adventurer who would not shrink from the most hideous deeds.

Obada had won by hard fighting.  No one could prove a theft against him of so much as a single drachma; but he nevertheless had to take many a rough word, and with one consent the assembly refused him the deference justly due to the governor’s representative.

Bitterly indignant, he remained till the very last in the council-chamber, no one staying with him, not even his own subalterns, to speak a soothing word in praise of the power and eloquence of his address, while the same cursed wretches would, under similar circumstances, have buzzed round Amru like swarming bees, and have escorted him home like curs wagging their tails.  He ascribed the contumely and opposition he met with to their prejudice, as haughty, free-born men against his birth, and not to any fault of his own, and yet he looked down on them all, feeling himself the superior of each by himself; if the blow in Medina were successful, he would pick out his victims, and then. . . .

His dreams of vengeance were abruptly broken by a messenger, covered with dust from head to foot; he brought good news:  Orion was taken and safely bestowed in the Kadi’s house.

“And why not in mine?” asked Obada in peremptory tones.  “Who is the governor’s representative here.  Othman or I?  Take the prisoner to my house.”

And he forthwith went home.  But instead of the prisoner there presently appeared before him an official of the Kadi’s household, who informed him, from his master, that as the Khaliff had constituted Othman supreme judge in Egypt this matter was in his hands; if Obada wished to see the prisoner he might go to the Kadi’s residence, or visit him later in the town prison of Memphis, whither Orion would presently be transferred.

He rushed off, raging, to his enemy’s house, but his stormy fury was met by the placidity of a calm and judicial mind.  Othman was a man between forty and fifty years old, but his soft, black beard was already turning grey; his noble dark face bore the stamp of a lofty, high-bred soul, and a keen but temperate spirit shone in his eyes.  There was something serene and clear in his whole person; he was a man to bear the burthen of life’s vicissitudes with dignity, while he had set himself the task of saving others from them so far as in him lay.