this painful state of doubt, he counted the weary hours in
his lonely cell, and calmly awaited his impending fate, let it be
what it might.

He knew the summary mode in which Turkish justice was administered;
he was not unfamiliar with the dark stories that were told of sunken
bodies about the outer bastion of the palace where its walls were
laved by the Bosphorus. He knew very well that an unfaithful wife or
rival lover was often sacrificed to the pride or revenge of any
titled or rich Turk who happened to possess the power to enable him
to carry out his purpose. Knowing all this he prepared his mind for
whatever might come, and had he been summoned to follow a guard
detailed to sink him in the sea, he would not have been surprised.
The idiot boy, half-witted as he was, seemed at once by some natural
instinct to divine the relationship that existed between Komel and
the prisoner, and suggested to her a plan of communication with him
by means of flowers. She saw the boy gather up a handful of loose
buds and blossoms from her lap several times, and observed him carry
them away. Curiosity led her to see what he did with then, and she
followed him as far as she might do consistently with the rules of
the harem, and from thence observed him scale a tree that overhung a
dark sombre-looking building, and toss the flowers through a small
window, into what she knew at once must be Aphiz's cell.

In childhood, Aphiz and herself had often interpreted to each other
the language of flowers, and now hastening back to the luxuriant
conservatory of plants, she culled such as she desired, and
arranging them with nervous fingers, told in their fragrant folds
how tenderly she still loved him, and that she was still true to
their plighted faith.

Entrusting this to the boy she indicated what he was to do with it,
while the poor half-witted being seemed in an ecstacy of delight at
his commission, and soon deposited the precious token inside the
window of Aphiz's prison.

It needed no conjuror to tell Aphiz whom that floral letter came
from. The shower of buds and blossoms that had been thrown to him by
the boy had puzzled him, coming without any apparent design,
regularity, or purpose; but this, as he read its hidden mystery, was
all clear enough to him, he knew the hand that had to gathered and
bound them together. She was true and loved him still.

Komel, in her earnest love, despite the rebuff she had already
received, determined