ess of death in seeing
his sons strangled before his eyes, Mehemet the elder, remarkable, for
his beauty, and the gentle Selim, whose merits might have procured the
pardon of his family had not Fate ordained otherwise. After next
beholding the execution of his brother, Salik Pacha, Ali's best loved
son, whom a Georgian slave had borne to him in his old age, Veli,
weeping, yielded his guilty head to the executioners.

His women were then seized, and the unhappy Zobeide, whose scandalous
story had even reached Constantinople, sewn up in a leather sack, was
flung into the Pursak--a river whose waters mingle with those of the
Sagaris. Katherin, Veli's other wife, and his daughters by various
mothers, were dragged to the bazaar and sold ignominiously to Turcoman
shepherds, after which the executioners at once proceeded to make an
inventory of the spoils of their victims.

But the inheritance of Mouktar Pacha was not quite such an easy prey. The
kapidgi-bachi who dared to present him with the bowstring was instantly
laid dead at his feet by a pistol-shot. "Wretch!" cried Mouktar, roaring
like a bull escaped from the butcher, "dost thou think an Arnaout dies
like an eunuch? I also am a Tepelenian! To arms, comrades! they would
slay us!" As he spoke, he rushed, sword in hand, upon the Turks, and
driving them back, succeeded in barricading himself in his apartments.

Presently a troop of janissaries from Koutaieh, ordered to be in
readiness, advanced, hauling up cannon, and a stubborn combat began.
Mouktar's frail defences were soon in splinters. The venerable
Metche-Bono, father of Elmas Bey, faithful to the end, was killed by a
bullet; and Mouktar, having slain a host of enemies with his own hand and
seen all his friends perish, himself riddled with wounds, set fire to the
powder magazine, and died, leaving as inheritance for the sultan only a
heap of smoking ruins. An enviable fate, if compared with that of his
father and brothers, who died by the hand of the executioner.

The heads of Ali's children, sent to Constantinople and exposed at the
gate of the seraglio, astonished the gaping multitude. The sultan
himself, struck with the beauty of Mehemet and Selim, whose long
eyelashes and closed eyelids gave them the appearance of beautiful youths
sunk in peaceful slumber, experienced a feeling of emotion. "I had
imagined them," he said stupidly, "to be quite as old as their father;"
and he expressed sorrow for the