will, and abuse me
and mock me; I have none of what you call imagination; I see things
simply as they are: but there must be some understanding between that
girl and the thief."

"You are not to say another word of such monstrous nonsense!" exclaimed
her husband; and he would have said more, but that at that moment the
groom of the chambers announced that Gamaliel, the Jewish goldsmith,
begged an audience. The man had come to give information with regard to
the fate of the lost emerald.

At this statement Orion changed color, and he turned away from the
merchant as the slave admitted the same Israelite who had been sitting
over the fire with the head-servants. He at once plunged into his story,
telling it in his peculiar light-hearted style. He was so rich that the
loss he might suffer did not trouble him enough to spoil his good-humor,
and so honest that it was a pleasure to him to restore the stolen
property to its rightful owner. Early that morning, so he told them,
Hiram the groom had been to him to offer him a wonderfully large and
splendid emerald for sale. The freedman had assured him that the stone
was part of the property left by the famous Thomas, his former master.
It had decorated the head-stall of the horse which the hero of Damascus
had last ridden, and it had come to him with the steed.

"I offered him what I thought fair," the Jew went on, "and paid him two
thousand drachmae on account; the remainder he begged me to take charge
of for the present. To this I agreed, but ere long a fly began to hum
suspicion in my ear. Then the police rushed through the town with the
bloodhounds. Good Heavens, what a barking! The creatures yelped as if
they would bark my poor house down, like the trumpets round the walls of
Jericho--you know. 'What is the matter now,' I asked of the dog-keepers,
and behold! my suspicions about the emerald were justified; so here, my
lord Governor, I have brought you the stone, and as every suckling
in Memphis hears from its nurse--unless it is deaf--what a just man
Mukaukas George is, you will no doubt make good to me what I advanced
to that stammering scoundrel. And you will have the best of the bargain,
noble Sir; for I make no demand for interest or even maintenance for the
two hours during which it was mine."

"Give me the stone!" interrupted the Arab, who was annoyed by the Jew's
jesting tone; he snatched the emerald from him, weighed it in his hand,
put it close to his eyes, held