e ground.

"A bishop, then," inquired Gaddo, "may be guilty of any enormity sooner
than wedlock, which money itself cannot expiate?"

"Such," they answered, "is the law and the prophets."

"Unless," added one of benignant aspect, "he sew the abomination up in a
sack and cast her into the sea, then peradventure he may yet find place for
repentance."

"Miserable blasphemers!" exclaimed Gaddo. "But why," continued he, checking
himself, "do I talk of what none will understand for five hundred years,
which to understand myself I was obliged to become a Saracen? Addo," he
pursued, addressing his dejected competitor, "bad as thou art, thou art
good enough for the world as it is. I spare thy life, restore thy dignity,
and, to prove that the precepts of Christ may be practised under the garb
of Mahomet, will not even exact eye for eye. Yet, as a wholesome admonition
to thee that treachery and cruelty escape not punishment even in this life,
I will that thou do presently surrender to me thy left ear. Restore my eye
and I will return it immediately. And ye," addressing the envoys, "will for
the future pay one hundred casks tribute, unless ye would see my
father-in-law's galleys on your coasts."

So Addo returned to his bishopric, leaving his ear in Gaddo's keeping. The
Lacrima was punctually remitted, and as punctually absorbed by the Emir and
his son-in-law, with some little help from Ayesha. Gaddo's eye never came
back, and Addo never regained his ear until, after the ex-prelate's death
in years and honour, he ransomed it from his representatives. It became a
relic, and is shown in Addo's cathedral to this day in proof of his
inveterate enmity to the misbelievers, and of the sufferings he underwent
at their hands. But Gaddo trumped him, the entry after his name in the
episcopal register, "Fled to the Saracens," having been altered into
"Flayed by the Saracens" by a later bishop, jealous of the honour of the
diocese.

THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE BUTTERFLIES

The scene was in a garden on a fine summer morning, brilliant with slants
of sunshine, yet chequered with clouds significant of more than a remote
possibility of rain. All the animal world was astir. Birds flitted or
hopped from spray to spray; butterflies eddied around flowers within or
upon which bees were bustling; ants and earwigs ran nimbly about on the
mould; a member of the Universal Knowledge Society perambulated the gravel
path.

The Universal Knowledge