there is nothing to surprise me or you in the
fact that a noble woman, as she is, should assume the onus of another's
crime, and place herself in a doubtful light to save a man who has
hitherto been honest and faithful. The nurse is here; shall she be
called, or have you, Nilus, heard from her everything that her mistress
can say in favor of her freedman?"

"Perpetua told me, and told you, too, my lord, certain credible facts,"
replied the treasurer. "But I could not repeat them so exactly as she
herself, and I am of opinion that the woman should be brought before the
court."

"Then call her," said Orion, fixing his eyes on vacancy above the heads
of the assembly, with a look of sullen dignity.

After a long and anxious pause the old woman was brought in. Confident
in her righteous cause she came forward boldly; she blamed Hiram
somewhat sharply for keeping silence so long, and then explained that
Paula, to procure money for her search for her father, had made the
freedman take a costly emerald out of its setting in her necklace, and
that it was the sale of this gem that had involved her fellow-countryman
in this unfortunate suspicion.

The nurse's deposition seemed to have biased the greater part of the
council in favor of the accused; but Orion did not give them time to
discuss their impressions among themselves. Hardly had Perpetua ceased
speaking, when Orion took up the emerald, which was lying on the table
before him, exclaiming excitedly, nay, angrily:

"And the stone which is recognized by the man who sold it--an expert in
gems--as being that which was taken from the hanging, and unique of its
kind, is supposed, by some miracle of nature, to have suddenly appeared
in duplicate?--Malignant spirits still wander through the world, but
would hardly dare to play their tricks in this Christian house. You all
know what 'old women's tales' are; and the tale that old woman has told
us is one of the most improbable of its class. 'Tell that to Apelles the
Jew,' said Horace the Roman; but his fellow-Israelite, Gamaliel'--and
he turned to the jeweller who was sitting with the other witnesses will
certainly not believe it; still less I, who see through this tissue of
falsehood. The daughter of the noble Thomas has condescended to weave it
with the help of that woman--a skilled weaver, she--to spread it before
us in order to mislead us, and so to save her faithful servant from
imprisonment, from the mines, or from death. T