open;
everything depends on that, Orion!"

He succeeded in hastily collecting his thoughts, and exclaimed in a voice
which lacked little of its usual eager cheerfulness:

"How dismal you all look! It is indeed a terrible disaster that the dog
should have handled the poor girl so roughly, and that our people should
have behaved so outrageously; but, as I told you this morning, worthy
Merchant, the guilty parties shall pay for it with their lives. My
father, I am sure, will agree that you should deal with them according to
your pleasure, and our leech Philippus, in spite of his youth, is a
perfect Hippocrates I can assure you! He will patch up the fine
fellow--your head-man I mean, and as to any question of compensation, my
father--well, you know he is no haggler."

"I beg you not to add insult to the injury that I have suffered under
your roof," interrupted Haschim. "No amount of money can buy off my wrath
over the spilt blood of a friend--and Rustem was my friend--a free and
valiant youth. As to the punishment of the guilty: on that I insist.
Blood cries for blood. That is our creed; and though yours, to be sure,
enjoins the contrary, so far as I know you act by the same rule as we.
All honor to your physician; but it goes to my heart, and raises my gall
to see such things take place in the house of the man to whom the Khaliff
has confided the weal or woe of Egyptian Christians. Your boasted
tolerance has led to the death of an honest though humble man in a time
of perfect peace--or at least maimed him for life. As to your honesty, it
would seem. . ."

"Who dares impugn it?" cried Orion.

"I, young man," replied the merchant with the calm dignity of age. "I,
who sold this piece of work last evening, and find it this morning robbed
of its most precious ornament."

"The great emerald has been cut from the hanging during the night." Dame
Neforis explained. "You yourself went with the man who carried it to the
tablinum and saw it laid there."

"And in the very cloth in which your people had wrapped it," added Orion.
"Our good old Sebek there was with me. Who fetched away the bale this
morning; who brought it here and opened it?"

"Happily for us," said the Arab, "it was your lady mother herself, with
that man--your steward if I mistake not--and your own slaves."

"Why was it not left where it was?" asked Orion, giving vent to the
annoyance which at this moment he really felt.

"Because I had assured your father,