"Here again, my Mohammed! They have been speaking of you all day, and three men have already been here to tell of your heroic deed.

Let me see your hands. Yes, they are torn and bleeding. Yes, my boy, I have rejoiced with you, and am proud with you for having put those boys to shame."

"I thank you, sir," said he, earnestly; "yet it is not enough to conquer boys; one must also conquer men and nations!"

Mr. Lion regarded him with wonder. "What is this you are saying?

What are you busying your brain with now?"

"With many things, sir; I desire you to help me provide for my future."

"I am delighted, Mohammed," said the merchant, regarding him with a friendly smile, "I am delighted to see you thoughtful of your future. I have often scolded your mother about you; you are tall and sensible for your age, are almost a young man, and it would become you to be taking care of yourself. But both your mother and your Uncle Toussoun are spoiling you in their anxiety to strew your pathway with rose-leaves, and guard you from every hardship."

"They would," said the boy, shrugging his shoulders, "if I allowed them, but I will not! I will bare my face to the storm, and walk on thorns instead of rose-leaves, in order that my feet may become hardened. Therefore, tell me, dear sir, what I am to do to provide for my future."

"That is hard to tell," replied Lion, with a sigh. "For every thing a certain something is necessary, which you, unfortunately, do not possess."

"And what is this something? " asked the boy, hastily

"Money," replied the merchant. "It is not enough to pray to Allah, and to receive into one's soul the precepts of the Koran; one must also use one's hands industriously, and learn the precepts of worldly wisdom, and the very first of these is, 'Have money, and you can obtain all else.'"

"I will have money, that I may obtain all else!" exclaimed Mohammed; "only tell me how to procure it."

"That is just where the difficulty lies, you foolish boy," said the merchant, stroking his brown hair gently. "Those who rob and plunder make it much easier for themselves in the world, and I have known many a one to begin his career as a robber who, subsequently, ruled over men as a grand pacha. Yet I am confident that it is not in this manner you wish to acquire riches, but as an honest man."

"Yes, as an honest man! I desire to gain honor, magnificence, and wealth, by the power of my will and my intellect."

"Honor, magnificence, and wealth?" repeated Mr. Lion. "These are grand words, my boy! It will be very difficult to accomplish so much, and I can render you no assistance in doing so, yet I will take you into my business and try to make a merchant of you, if you wish it."

"Merchant!" repeated the boy, thoughtfully. "I have nothing that I could sell."

"Yet you can sell yourself. Do not look at me so angrily! I do not mean that you should sell yourself as a slave, but do business with your head, your work, and your good-will. Help me to wait on my customers, to sell goods, and to praise them with pleasing manners, and I will furnish you with food and clothing, and pay you monthly wages besides, which you can give to your mother."

"I should have to stand behind the counter, and play the amiable to people, as I have seen you do?"

"Yes, my son, that you would have to do."

"I should have to listen quietly to the gossips, spread out before them the carpets, turbans, and Persian shawls; and, as I have seen you do, cover the spots with my hands and praise the goods, and then hear them scold, and bargain, and cheapen?"

"Really, you will make a good merchant; I see you have learned a great deal already."

"I should, when the women stroll in and seat themselves at the counter, have to wait on them humbly with coffee, and beg them to do us the honor? Should have to hear them talk about their domestic affairs, their cats, and their dogs, and appear to be delighted with the sweetness of their voices, and the lustre of their eyes?"

"By your prophet, you are a finished merchant, and will make a splendid salesman!"

"No, I shall not!" cried the boy. "No, sir! I love you with my whole soul, and have often observed and admired how you understand your art, but, forgive me for saying so, I cannot become a merchant!

Propose something that I can do."

"Very well! I will propose something else; become a writer, learn the art, understood by so few, of putting words spoken by others on paper with signs. I should be well pleased, as I need a writer. The one I have has grown old and lazy, and, though I can speak your language, I cannot write it. Yes, learn to write, and then you will be provided for permanently, for writers are rare, and--"

"I will not learn it!" said the boy, interrupting him; "I will have nothing to do with the pen. I will write my name with the sword on the faces of my enemies!"

"That would be a beautiful handwriting!' observed Mr. Lion, laughing. "It will, however, be some time before you can do that, and, in the mean while, I would advise you to go to old Scha-er Mehsed, the story-teller. He knows wonderful tales, and the whole history of the great Prophet Mohammed. You know, in the evenings, crowds assemble around him, and it fairly rains pennies. But Scha-er Mehsed has grown old, and hard to understand because he has lost his teeth. Go and listen to him, then take your seat on the stone and tell stories of the olden time yourself."

"No, Mr. Lion, that does not suit me either. I will first do great deeds before I tell of them. Not until I have grown old shall the men and women assemble around me; then they shall hear of my deeds.

But to tell of the deeds of others only, would give me no pleasure.

I see nothing is left me but to become a soldier. Yes, a soldier."

"I, too, believe that would be the best thing for you," said Mr.

Lion, with a kindly nod of the head. "But then you must wait until you are larger and stronger, for they do not make soldiers of boys, and you are still a boy. At ten years of age one is not yet a man, my little hero. But at fifteen you will be a youth, and then you will be accepted as a soldier. And I prophesy for you a great and brilliant career as such. Until then, however, I promise to help your mother to take care of you, and, if I can serve you in any way, come to me, for you know I love you, and will gladly do what I can for you."

"Until then I will be the general of the boys of Cavalla, and they shall all bow down to me, and pay me tribute."

CHAPTER III

BOYISH DREAMS.

Since that day a great change had taken place in Mohammed Ali. He was graver and more silent, and participated less in the games of the boys. He no longer laughed and jested as he had formerly done, but he was all the more busily occupied with his gun, inherited from his father, exercising himself in shooting, and almost always hitting his mark. He also strengthened his limbs by fencing with his old uncle, who had formerly been a soldier, or by throwing himself into the sea, to struggle with the waves and allow himself to be buffeted about by them for hours. The boy prepared himself to become a man, and he did so with his whole soul, and with the whole strength of his will.

He often wandered in solitude among the rocks on the heights, or lingered on the beach below; and when he would return to his mother, on such occasions, she could see reflected in his countenance the great thoughts that agitated her boy's soul. He seemed to her to grow visibly taller each day; that the boy was transforming himself into a man with wonderful rapidity. She knew that this boy would become a hero; she had seen it in the expression of his eyes while relating her dream, and she comprehended the longing which filled his soul, for her soul was strong and aspiring like his, and Mohammed had inherited his ambition and strong will from his mother Khadra.

"He thinks as I should think were I a man," said Khadra to herself, as she sat on the threshold of her door regarding her son. "Neither should I be contented with our present miserable existence if I were a man. I, too, should desire to go out and struggle with the world.

Alas! but I am only a poor widow, living a miserable, solitary life, awaiting the day when death shall call me, and unite me in Paradise with Ibrahim Aga, my master. But let the young eagle brood and think until his wings are grown, and then let him fly into the world out of this miserable, rocky nest. May Allah bless his purpose, and Mohammed the prophet protect him! Allah il Allah!"

While the mother was praying, and looking out wistfully into the twilight, Mohammed was sitting in his rocky cave down on the shore.

This was as yet his only possession, his palace! No one knew of this cave, discovered by the boy while wandering on the shore. He had crept into a narrow opening in the rock which he had observed among the cliffs, that was hardly large enough to admit of the passage of his slender body. He crept on his hands and knees, and noticed with delight that this opening widened into a cave. He went on, deeper and deeper into the darkness, when suddenly he saw a bright light overhead, and discovered that he was in a wide cave, lighted from above by a round opening as by a window.

Through this opening he could view the sea, and the sky above.

This cave was known to no one else, and Mohammed carefully preserved the secret of its existence.

This cave was his palace! Here he could dream of the future; here, in impenetrable solitude, he could dwell with his thoughts; from here he could look up and implore counsel from the heavens above, or look down at the foaming sea beneath, and refresh his soul with its majesty.

By degrees he had made this cave habitable. Who knows but it may be necessary to seek it as a refuge from pursuit and danger some day?

Who knows but that he may be compelled to seek safety here some day from his enemies, or even from his friends?

Whatever he could spare from the little sums of money which his mother occasionally gave him, or from the presents of Mr. Lion or his old uncle, he devoted to the purchase of bedding, or some other article of furniture of the kind used in the huts of the poor. And then at night, when no one could see him, he would creep with these things into his cave, his palace of the future. Sometimes, while sitting there dreaming, the deep-blue sky looking down upon him, the sun throwing a ray of golden light through the cave, strange visions would appear to him. The cave would transform itself into a glittering palace, and the wretched mat that lay on the ground became a luxurious silken couch, on which he reclined, smoking his tschibak, while slaves stood around in reverential attitudes, ready to do his bidding. When seated on his rickety stool--a costly possession--for it had been bought with the last remnant of his money, it seemed to him that, clothed in purple, he had mounted his throne, around which wondrous strains of melody resounded. It did not occur to him that it was the murmur of the waves beating upon the rock-bound shore without; to him they were the triumphant songs of his future greeting him, the ruler.

"A ruler, a hero, a prince, he is to be," said the prophetess to his mother, and he will do what he can to fulfil this prophecy.

It was with a great effort only that he could tear himself away from such ecstatic dreams; quit his hidden paradise, and go out into the world, into reality again.

One cannot live on dreams; one must eat, too. But it annoys him that he is subjected to this wretched necessity of eating.

"If I should have nothing to eat; if I should become so poor and miserable as to have no bread, must I then die be cause I am in the habit of eating?" he would ask himself, in angry tones.