in my own hands. That youngster takes as good care
of the damsel's fortune as though it were his own already, and what is
more...."

Here Paula broke in. She did not know what the malicious man was going
to say, but it was something insulting beyond a doubt. And there stood
Orion, just as she had pictured him in moments of tender remembrance;
she felt his eye resting on her in ecstasy. To go up to him, to tell him
all she was feeling in this critical struggle for life or death, seemed
impossible; but as the Vekeel began to disclose to their judges matters
which concerned only herself and her lover, every impulse prompted her
to interpose and, in this fateful hour, to do her friend such service
as she once, like a coward, had shrank from. So with eager emotion, her
eyes flashing, she interrupted the negro "Stop!" she cried, "you are
wasting words and trouble. What you are trying to prove by subtlety I am
proud and glad to declare. Hear it, all of you. The son of the Mukaukas
is my betrothed!"

At the same time her eye sought to meet Orion's. And thus, in the very
extremity of danger, they enjoyed a solemn moment of the purest, deepest
happiness. Paula's eyes were moist with grateful tenderness, when Orion
exclaimed:

"You have heard from her own lips what makes the greatest bliss of my
life. The noble daughter of Thomas is my promised bride!"

There was a murmur among the Jacobite judges. 'Till this moment several
of them, oppressed by the heat, had sat dreaming with their heads sunk
on their breasts, but now they were suddenly as wide-awake and alert
as though a jet of cold water had been turned on to them, and one cried
out: "And your father, young man? You have forgotten him in a hurry!
What would he have said to such a disgrace to his blood as your marriage
to a Melchite, the daughter of those who caused your two brothers to be
murdered? Oh! if the dead could...."

"He blessed our union on his death-bed," Orion put in.

"Did he, indeed?" asked another Jacobite with sarcastic scorn. "Then the
patriarch was in the right when he refused to let the priests follow his
corpse. That I should live to be witness to such crimes!"

But such words fell on the ears of the enraptured pair like the chirping
of crickets. They felt, they cared for nothing but what this blissful
moment had brought them, and never suspected that Paula's glad avowal
had sealed her death-warrant.

The wrath of the Jacobite faction now hastened t