Another scorching day! The rocks by the wayside still threw long shadows
on the sandy desert-road, when a party of Arab horsemen came from Fostat
to meet the travellers, shouting the latest news to the prisoner's
escort. It was evidently important; but Orion did not understand a word
of what they said. Evil tidings fly fast, however; while the men were
talking together, the dragoman rode up to him and told him that his home
was burnt to the ground and half Memphis still in flames. Then came
other newsbearers, on horseback and on dromedaries; and they met chariots
and files of camels loaded with corn and Egyptian merchandise; and each
and all shouted to the Arab escort reports of what was going on in
Memphis, hoping to be the first to tell the homeward bound party.

How many times did Orion hear the story--and each time that a traveller
began with: "Have you heard?" pointing westward, the wounds the first
news had inflicted bled anew.

What lay beneath that mass of ashes? How much had the flames consumed
that never could be replaced! Much that he had silently wished were
possible had in fact been fulfilled--and so soon! Where now was the
burthen of great wealth which had hung about his heels and hindered his
running freely? And yet he did not, even now, feel free; the way was not
yet open before him; he secretly mourned over the ruined house of his
fathers and the wrecked home; a miserable sense of insecurity weighed him
down. No father--no mother-no parental roof! For years he had been, in
fact, perfectly independent, and yet he felt now like a pilot whose boat
had lost its rudder.

Before him lay a prison, and the closing act of the great tragedy of
which he himself had been the hero. Fate had fallen on his house, had