In the densest quarter, where the streets were narrowest and most full of ruts, the houses most wretched, and the windows most covered with cobwebs, a company of dervishes were walking in procession, bearing their ragged banners, and singing their weird Arab music to the accompaniment of pipes and drums, while boys parading beside them were carrying tin lamps and open flares. Before certain of the houses they stopped, and for some minutes they swayed their bodies to an increasing chorus of "Allah! Allah! Allah!" Gordon saw what had happened. With the coming of the new teacher a wave of religious feeling had swept over the city. Dam it up suddenly, and what scenes of fanatical frenzy might not occur! Back in his room, with the window down to shut out the noises from the river and the bridge, he tried to come to a conclusion as to what he ought to do the following day if the Ulema decided to resist. They _would_ resist, he had no doubt about that, for where men were under the influence of gusts of religious passion, they might call on God, but God’s answer was always the same. If the Ulema were to decide not to close their sacred place they would intend to die in defence of it, and, seeing the issue from the Moslem point of view, that El Azhar was the centre of their spiritual life, Gordon concluded that they would be justified in resisting. If they were justified the order to evict them would be wicked, and the act of eviction would be a crime. "I can’t do it," he told himself. "I can’t and I won’t!" This firm resolve relieved him for a moment, and then he began to ask himself what would happen if he refused to obey. The bad work would be done all the same, for somebody else would do it. "What, then, will be the result?" he thought. The first result would be that he himself would suffer. He would be tried for insubordination, and of course degraded and punished. As a man he might be in the right, but as a soldier he would be in the wrong. He thought of his hard-fought fights and of the honours he had won, and his head went round in a whirl. The next result would be that he would bring disgrace upon his father as well. His refusal to obey orders would become known, and if the consequences he expected should come to pass he would seem to stand up as the first of his father’s accusers. He, his father’s only son, would be the means of condemning him in the eyes of England, of Europe, of the world! In his old age, too, and after all he had done for Egypt! Then above all there was Helena! The General would side with the Consul-General, and Helena would be required to cast in her lot with her father or with him. If she sided with him she would have to break with her father; if she sided with her father she would have to part from him. In either case the happiness of her life would be wasted—_he_ would have wasted it, and he would have wasted his own happiness as well.