some far-seeing
gamblers who had drawn low numbers, had bribed the soldiers and wardens
to sprinkle the hair and garments of the Christians with valerian water,
a decoction which was supposed to attract and excite the appetite of
these great cats. Others, whose tickets were high, paid handsomely for
the employment of artifices which need not be detailed, calculated to
induce in the lions aversion to the subject that had been treated.
The Christian woman or child, it will be observed, who was to form
the _corpus vile_ of these ingenious experiments, was not considered,
except, indeed, as the fisherman considers the mussel or the sand-worm
on his hook.

Under an arch by themselves, and not far from the great gateway where
the guards, their lances in hand, could be seen pacing up and down,
sat two women. The contrast in the appearance of this pair was very
striking. One, who could not have been much more than twenty years of
age, was a Jewess, too thin-faced for beauty, but with dark and lovely
eyes, and bearing in every limb and feature the stamp of noble blood.
She was Rachel, the widow of Demas, a Graeco-Syrian, and only child of
the high-born Jew Benoni, one of the richest merchants in Tyre. The
other was a woman of remarkable aspect, apparently about forty years
of age. She was a native of the coasts of Libya, where she had been
kidnapped as a girl by Jewish traders, and by them passed on to
Phoenicians, who sold her upon the slave market of Tyre. In fact she was
a high-bred Arab without any admixture of negro blood, as was shown by
her copper-coloured skin, prominent cheek bones, her straight, black,
abundant hair, and untamed, flashing eyes. In frame she was tall and
spare, very agile, and full of grace in every movement. Her face was
fierce and hard; even in her present dreadful plight she showed no fear,
only when she looked at the lady by her side it grew anxious and tender.
She was called Nehushta, a name which Benoni had given her when many
years ago he bought her upon the market-place. In Hebrew Nehushta means
copper, and this new slave was copper-coloured. In her native land,
however, she had another name, Nou, and by this name she was known to
her dead mistress, the wife of Benoni, and to his daughter Rachel, whom
she had nursed from childhood.

The moon shone very brightly in a clear sky, and by the light of it an
observer, had there been any to observe where all were so occupied
with their own urgent af