t off in the courtyard of the Hall
of justice: Orion's and Paula's--and she was left alone, quite alone and
forlorn. Her mother was lying by her father's side under the sand in the
cemetery, and who was there to care for her, to be troubled about her,
to protect her? She was alone in the world like a tree without roots,
like a leaf blown out to sea, like an unfledged bird that has fallen out
of the nest.

Then, for the first time since that evening when she had borne false
witness, her memory reverted to all she had been taught at school and
in the church of the torments of hell, and she pictured the abode of
the damned, and the scorching, seething Lake of fire in which murderers,
heretics, false witnesses....

What was that?

Had hell indeed yawned, and were the flames soaring up to the sky
through the riven shell of the earth? Had the firmament opened to pour
living fire and black fumes on the northern part of the city?

She started up in dismay, her eyes fixed on the terrible sight. The
whole sky seemed to be in flames; a fiery furnace, with dense smoke and
myriads of shooting sparks, filled the whole space between earth and
heaven. A devouring conflagration was apparently about to annihilate
the town, the river, the starry vault itself; the metal heralds which
usually called the faithful to church lifted up their voices; the quiet
road at her feet suddenly swarmed with thousands of people; shrieks,
yells and frantic commands came up from below, and in the
confusion of tongues she could distinguish the words "Governor's
Palace"--"Arabs"--"Mukaukas"--"Orion"--"fire"--"Put it out"--"Save it."

At this moment the old head-gardener called up to her from the
lotos-tank: "The palace is in flames! And in this drought--God
All-merciful save the town!"

Her knees gave way; she put out her hands with a faint cry to feel for
some support, and two arms were thrown about her-the arms which she so
lately had pushed away: her mother's: that mother who had bent over her
only child and inhaled death in a kiss on her plague-tainted hair.

CHAPTER XV.

The governor's palace, the pride and glory of Memphis, the magnificent
home of the oldest and noblest family of the land--the last house that
had given birth to a race of native Egyptians held worthy, even by the
Greeks, to represent the emperor and uphold the highest dignity in the
world--the very citadel of native life, lay in ashes; and just as a
giant of the woods cru