nest of her diamond rings on his
finger, already covered with gems, and then eagerly searched every
corner of the rooms which Orion had occupied.

His interpreter, who could read Greek, had to translate every document
he found that did not contain verses. While he listened, he clawed and
strummed on the young man's lyre and poured out the scented oil which
Orion had been wont to use to smear it over his beard. In front of the
bright silver mirror he could not cease from making faces.

To his great disgust he could find nothing among the hundred objects
and trifles that lay about to justify suspicion, till, just as he was
leaving the room, he noticed in a basket near the writing-table some
discarded tablets. He at once pointed them out to the interpreter
and, though there was but little to read on the Diptychon,--[Double
writing-tablets, which folded together]--it seemed important to the
negro for it ran as follows:

"Orion, the son of George, to Paula the daughter of Thomas!

"You have heard already that it is now impossible for me to assist in
the rescue of the nuns. But do not misunderstand me. Your noble, and
only too well-founded desire to lend succor to your fellow-believers
would have sufficed..."

From this point the words written on the wax were carefully effaced, and
hardly a letter was decipherable; indeed, there were so few lines that
it seemed as though the letter had never been ended-which was the fact.

Though it gave the Vekeel no inculpating evidence against Orion it
pointed to his connection with the guilty parties: Paula, doubtless, had
been concerned in the scheme which had cost the lives of so many brave
Moslems. The negro had learnt, through the money-changer at Fostat,
that she was on terms of close intimacy with the Mukaukas' son and had
entrusted her property to his stewardship. They must both be accused as
accomplices in the deed, and the document proved Orion's knowledge of
it, at any rate.

Plotinus, the bishop, at whose instigation the fugitives had been
chased, could fill up what the damsel might choose to conceal.

He had started to follow the patriarch immediately after the pursuers
had set out, and had only returned from Upper Egypt early on the
previous day. On his arrival he had forwarded to the Vekeel two
indictments brought against Orion by the prelate: the first relating
to the evasion of the nuns; the other to the embezzlement of a costly
emerald; the rightful property of t