power to interrupt her with a single word.

She had spoken, and all was told.

He clung to the couch like a shattered wretch; and when his father
turned his eyes on him and gasped out: "Then the Court--our Court
of justice pronounced an unrighteous sentence?" he bowed his head in
contrition.

The dying man murmured even less articulately and incoherently than
before: "The gem--the hanging--you, you perhaps--was it you? that
emerald--I cannot..."

Orion helped his father in his vain efforts to utter the dreadful words.
Sooner would he have died with the old man than have deceived him in
such a moment; he replied humbly and in a low voice:

"Yes, Father--I took it. But as surely as I love you and my mother this,
the first reckless act of my life, which has brought such horrors in its
train... Shall be the last," he would have said; but the words "I
took it," had scarcely passed his lips when his father was shaken by
a violent trembling, the expression of his eyes changed fearfully, and
before the son had spoken his vow to the end the unhappy father was, by
a tremendous effort, sitting upright. Loud sobs of penitence broke from
the young man's heaving breast, as the Mukaukas wrathfully exclaimed, in
thick accents, as quickly as the heavy, paralyzed tongue would allow:

"You, you! A disgrace to our ancient and blameless Court! You?--Away
with you! A thief, an unjust judge, a false witness,--and the only
descendant of Menas! If only these hands were able--you--you--Go,
villain!" And with this wild outcry, George, the gentle and just
Mukaukas, sank back on his pillows; his bloodshot eyes were staring,
fixed on vacancy; his gasping lips repeated again and again, but less
and less audibly the one word "Villain;" his swollen fingers clutched
at the light coverlet that lay over him; a strange, shrill wheezing
came through his open mouth, and the heavy corpse of the great dignitary
fell, like a falling palm-tree, into Orion's arms.

Orion started up, his eyes inflamed, his hair all dishevelled, and shook
the dead man as though to compel him back to life again, to hear his
oath and accept his vow, to see his tears of repentance, to pardon him
and take back the name of infamy which had been his parting word to his
loved and spoilt child.

In the midst of this wild outbreak the physician came back, glanced at
the dead man's distorted features, laid a hand on his heart, and said
with solemn regret as he led little Mary away f