down at her with eyes of
dismay, and over all the market there hung a hush of sudden awe.

Rosamund had risen in her place, and a faint colour came to warm her
pallor, a faint light kindled in her eyes. God had shown her the way
through this poor Spanish girl, and assuredly God would give her the
means to take it when her own turn came. She felt herself suddenly
uplifted and enheartened. Death was a sharp, swift severing, an easy
door of escape from the horror that threatened her, and God in His
mercy, she knew, would justify self-murder under such circumstances as
were her own and that poor dead Andalusian maid's.

At length Ibrahim roused himself from his momentary stupor. He stepped
deliberately across the body, his face inflamed, and stood to beard the
impassive dalal.

"She is dead!" he bleated. "I am defrauded. Give me back my gold!"

"Are we to give back the price of every slave that dies?" the dalal
questioned him.

"But she was not yet delivered to me," raved the Jew. "My hands had not
touched her. Give me back my gold."

"Thou liest, son of a dog," was the answer, dispassionately delivered.
"She was thine already. I had so pronounced her. Bear her hence, since
she belongs to thee."

The Jew, his face empurpling, seemed to fight for breath

"How?" he choked. "Am I to lose a hundred philips?"

"What is written is written," replied the serene dalal.

Ibrahim was frothing at the lips, his eyes were blood-injected. "But it
was never written that...."

"Peace," said the dalal. "Had it not been written it could not have come
to pass. It is the will of Allah! Who dares rebel against it?"

The crowd began to murmur.

"I want my hundred philips," the Jew insisted, whereupon the murmur
swelled into a sudden roar.

"Thou hearest?" said the dalal. "Allah pardon thee, thou art disturbing
the peace of this market. Away, ere ill betide thee."

"Hence! hence!" roared the crowd, and some advanced threateningly upon
the luckless Ibrahim. "Away, thou perverter of Holy Writ! thou filth!
thou dog! Away!"

Such was the uproar, such the menace of angry countenances and clenched
fists shaken in his very face, that Ibrahim quailed and forgot his loss
in fear.

"I go, I go," he said, and turned hastily to depart.

But the dalal summoned him back. "Take hence thy property," said he,
and pointed to the body. And so Ibrahim was forced to suffer the further
mockery of summoning his slaves to bear away the lifeless bo