h emotion, but
he did not venture to touch it, for he felt as if in doing so he should
be robbing the sick girl. While eating the bread and the radish he
contemplated the piece of meat as if it were some costly jewel, and when
a fly dared to settle on it he drove it off indignantly.

At last he tasted the meat, and thought of many former noon-day meals,
and how he had often found a flower in the satchel, that Uarda had
placed there to please him, with the bread. His kind old eyes filled
with tears, and his whole heart swelled with gratitude and love. He
looked up, and his glance fell on the table, and he asked himself how he
would have felt if instead of the old priest, robbed of his heart, the
sunshine of his old age, his granddaughter, were lying there motionless.
A cold shiver ran over him, and he felt that his own heart would not
have been too great a price to pay for her recovery. And yet! In the
course of his long life he had experienced so much suffering and wrong,
that he could not imagine any hope of a better lot in the other world.
Then he drew out the bond Nebsecht had given him, held it up with both
hands, as if to show it to the Immortals, and particularly to the judges
in the hall of truth and judgment, that they might not reckon with him
for the crime he had committed--not for himself but for another--and
that they might not refuse to justify Rui, whom he had robbed of his
heart.

While he thus lifted his soul in devotion, matters were getting warm
outside the dissecting room. He thought he heard his name spoken, and
scarcely had he raised his head to listen when a taricheut came in and
desired him to follow him.

In front of the rooms, filled with resinous odors and incense, in which
the actual process of embalming was carried on, a number of taricheutes
were standing and looking at an object in an alabaster bowl. The knees
of the old man knocked together as he recognized the heart of the beast
which he had substituted for that of the Prophet.

The chief of the taricheutes asked him whether he had opened the body of
the dead priest.

Pinem stammered out "Yes." Whether this was his heart? The old man
nodded affirmatively.

The taricheutes looked at each other, whispered together; then one of
them went away, and returned soon with the inspector of victims from the
temple of Anion, whom he had found in the house of the weaver, and the
chief of the kolchytes.

"Show me the heart," said the superinte