ng--my eyes were forcing out of their sockets--my
tongue protruded from my mouth--my brain appeared to be on fire--but all
recollection soon departed.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Staffir Allah! God forgive me! but are you not laughing at our beards,
old scarecrow? What think you, Mustapha?" continued the pacha, turning
to him. "What is all this but _lies_?"

"Lies!" screamed the old woman. "Lies! you tell me they are lies!
Well, well--the time has been. Pacha, after what I have suffered by
telling the truth all my life, it is hard, in my old age, to be told
that I lie: but you shall be convinced;" and the old woman put her hands
up to the shrivelled, pendent skin of her neck, and stretching it out
smooth, showed a deep blue mark, which encircled it like a necklace.
"Now are you satisfied?"

The pacha nodded his head to Mustapha, as if convinced; and then said,
"You may proceed."

"Yes, I may proceed; but I tell you pacha, that if you doubt what I say
once more, I will return your twenty pieces of gold, and hold my tongue.
I proved that I could do it as a young woman, and we become more
obstinate as we get old."

"That is no lie," observed Mustapha. "Continue, old woman, and we will
not interrupt you with doubts again."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

My brother, who had watched every motion of the sultan's, and who had
determined to reveal all rather than that I should suffer, when he
perceived the fatal mistake, which he did not till some moments
afterwards, uttered a loud cry, and attempted to burst from his guards.
Roused by the cry, the sultan looked up, and perceived what had taken
place. In a moment he darted from his throne, and was kneeling by me
with frantic exclamations. The mutes hastily tore away the bowstring,
but I was, to all appearance, dead.

"Yes, sultan, well you may rave;" exclaimed my brother; "for you have
good cause. You have destroyed one who, as she declared with her last
breath, was most faithful and most true. I acknowledge the conspiracy.
I told her my intentions, and she thought that she had succeeded in
preventing me, for I promised by _the three_, to abandon my design. She
has been faithful both to you and to me, for she believed that, although
accused, I had atoned for my fault by repentance."

The sultan looked earnestly at my brother, but made no answer. He
embraced me, at