le; but as the Vekeel began to disclose to their judges matters
which concerned only herself and her lover, every impulse prompted her to
interpose and, in this fateful hour, to do her friend such service as she
once, like a coward, had shrank from. So with eager emotion, her eyes
flashing, she interrupted the negro "Stop!" she cried, "you are wasting
words and trouble. What you are trying to prove by subtlety I am proud
and glad to declare. Hear it, all of you. The son of the Mukaukas is my
betrothed!"

At the same time her eye sought to meet Orion's. And thus, in the very
extremity of danger, they enjoyed a solemn moment of the purest, deepest
happiness. Paula's eyes were moist with grateful tenderness, when Orion
exclaimed:

"You have heard from her own lips what makes the greatest bliss of my
life. The noble daughter of Thomas is my promised bride!"

There was a murmur among the Jacobite judges. 'Till this moment several
of them, oppressed by the heat, had sat dreaming with their heads sunk on
their breasts, but now they were suddenly as wide-awake and alert as
though a jet of cold water had been turned on to them, and one cried out:
"And your father, young man? You have forgotten him in a hurry! What
would he have said to such a disgrace to his blood as your marriage to a
Melchite, the daughter of those who caused your two brothers to be
murdered? Oh! if the dead could. . . ."

"He blessed our union on his death-bed," Orion put in.

"Did he, indeed?" asked another Jacobite with sarcastic scorn. "Then the
patriarch was in the right when he refused to let the priests follow his
corpse. That I should live to be witness to such crimes!"

But such words fell on the ears of the enraptured pair like the chirping
of crickets. They felt, they cared for nothing but what this blissful
moment had brought them, and never suspected that Paula's glad avowal had
sealed her death-warrant.

The wrath of the Jacobite faction now hastened the end. The prosecutor,
an Arab, now represented how many Moslems had lost their lives in the
affair of the nuns, and once more read Orion's letter. His Christian
colleagues tried to prove that this document could only refer to the
flight, so ingeniously plotted, of the sisters; and now something quite
new and unlooked-for occurred, which gave a fresh turn to the
proceedings: the old man interrupted the Kadi to make a statement. At
this Paula's confidence rose again for the last speaker had s