husband interrupted her with an angry exclamation: "Leave the
girl quite out of the question wife!"

"As if I supposed her to be the thief!" retorted Neforis indignantly, and
she shrugged her shoulders as Orion, in mild reproach, also cried:
"Mother! consider . . ." and the merchant asked:

"Do you mean the young girl from whom I had to take such hard words last
night?--Well, then, I will stake my whole fortune on her innocence. That
beautiful, passionate creature is incapable of any underhand dealings."

"Passionate!" Neforis smiled. "Her heart is as cold and as hard as the
lost emerald; we have proved that by experience."

"Nevertheless," said Orion, "she is incapable of baseness."

"How zealous men can be for a pair of fine eyes!" interrupted his mother.
"But I have not the most remote suspicion of her; I have something quite
different in my mind. A pair of man's shoes were found lying by the
wounded girl. Did you do what my lord Orion ordered, Sebek?"

"At once, Mistress," replied the steward, "and I have been expecting the
captain of the watch for some time; for Psamtik. . . ."

But here he was interrupted: the officer in question, who for more than
twenty years had commanded the Mukaukas' guard of honor, was shown into
the room; after answering a few preliminary enquiries he began his report
in a voice so loud that it hurt the governor, and his wife was obliged to
request the soldier to speak more gently.

The bloodhounds and terriers had been let out after being allowed to
smell at the shoes, and a couple of them had soon found their way to the
side-door where Hiram had waited for Paula. There they paused, sniffing
about on all sides, and had then jumped up a few steps.

"And those stairs lead to Paula's room," observed Neforis with a shrug.

"But they were on a false scent," the officer eagerly added. "The little
toads might have thrown suspicion on an innocent person. The curs
immediately after rushed into the stables, and ran up and down like Satan
after a lost soul. The pack had soon pulled down the boy--the son of the
freedman who came here from Damascus with the daughter of the great
Thomas--and they went quite mad in his father's room: Heaven and earth!
what a howling and barking and yelping. They poked their noses into every
old rag, and now we knew where the hole in the wine-skin was.--I am sorry
for the man. He stammered horribly, but as a trainer, and in all that has
to do with horses, all ho