tend your protection to her. This is what I affirmed, and this I now
repeat. Does any one deny it?"

"Yes, my Tahra!" exclaimed the lovely Sol, with vehemence. "I cannot
accuse you of any treachery; yet the very words you bring against me
show that you have misunderstood my meaning, and hence the mistake which
has caused the imprudent step you have taken."

The affectionate words of Sol were contradicted by Tahra, with a degree
of asperity and roughness, that cruelly wounded the gentle heart of the
enchanting Jewess.

"Hearest thou all this, stubborn girl?" said the governor to her. "By
the deposition of this Moor, you are convicted of a crime that death
itself could scarce atone for, were you even on the instant to retract,
and embrace the truth."

The conference here closed. Tahra departed, and the governor himself
conducted the fair Sol to the apartments of his wife and
daughter-in-law, on whom he urged his wish that she should be treated
with the utmost kindness, and that no pains might be spared to win over
her heart.

Here we must for a while leave the afflicted Sol, to contemplate the
state in which her parents remained during her absence. Her hapless
mother, as we have related, watched her with anxious eyes till she had
entered the governor's palace with the Moorish soldier; and, utterly
unable to form a conjecture as to the cause of her sudden abduction, she
hastened full of grief and consternation to find her husband Haim, to
whom she gave a scarcely coherent relation of all that had occurred.

The astonished Hebrew broke forth into vehement exclamations; in this
confusion of doubt and suspicion, Simla became the first object of his
anger, and the frenzied disorder of his gestures threatened her with the
most fatal consequences; a deadly fear seized upon his faculties, and
agitated him well-nigh to insanity, and he sought a clue to the terrible
mystery in vain. Accompanied by Simla, he hastened to the dwelling of
the artful Tahra, and put to her a thousand questions, to some of which
she evasively replied, while in answering others she assumed a
threatening and reckless tone, which disclosed to Haim some portion of
the truth. For an instant he remained silent, then, burning with the
most violent rage, he grasped the hand of his wife, and rushed back to
their desolate home in a state akin to that of the wounded prey of the
hunter, seeking its forest lair. "You," exclaimed he, frantically, "you
only are t