ed her fate.

It was now his duty to fulfil the wish of a dying man, and he had
ordered the prison servants to prepare the room adjoining Paula's cell
with furniture which was on the way from his house. The door between the
two would be opened for her.

"And I shall see him again, have him again to live with--to close his
eyes, perhaps to die with him!" cried Paula; and, seizing the good man's
hand, she kissed it gratefully.

The Moslem's eyes filled with tears as he bid her not to thank him,
but God the All-merciful; and before the sun went down the head of the
doomed daughter was resting on the breast of the weary hero who was so
near his end, though his unimpaired mind and tender heart rejoiced in
their reunion as fully and deeply as did his beloved and only child. A
new and unutterable joy came to Paula in the gloom of her prison; and
that same day the warder carried a letter from her to Orion, conveying
her father's greetings; and, as he read the fervent blessing, he felt
as though an invisible hand had released him for ever from the curse his
own father had laid upon him. A wonderful glad sense of peace came over
him with power and pleasure in work, and he gave his brains and pen no
rest till morning was growing grey.

CHAPTER XXII.

Horapollo made his way home to his new quarters from the court of
justice with knit and gloomy brows. As he passed Susannah's garden hedge
he saw a knot of people gathered together and pointing out furtively to
the handsome residence beyond.

They, like a hundred other groups he had passed, hailed him with words
of welcome, thanks, and encouragement and, as he bowed to them slightly,
his eyes followed the direction of their terrified gaze and he started;
above the great garden gates hung the black tablet; a warning that
looked like a mark of disgrace, crying out to the passer-by: "Avoid this
threshold! Here rages the destroying pestilence!"

The old man had a horror of everything that might remind him of death,
and a cold shiver ran through him. To live so near to a focus of the
disease was most alarming and dangerous! How had it invaded this, the
healthiest part of the town, which the last raging epidemic had spared?

An officer of the town-council, whom he called to him, told him that two
slaves, father and son, whose duty it was to take charge of the baths
in the widow's house, had been first attacked, but they had been
carried quietly away in the night to the new te