sulting
words."

When the family met at table he made Paula's excuses; he himself ate only
a few mouthfuls, for the judges had assembled some time since and were
waiting for him.

The right of life and death had been placed in the hands of the ancestors
of the Mukaukas, powerful princes of provinces; they had certainly
wielded it even in the dynasty of Psammitichus, whose power had been put
to a terrible end by Cambyses the Persian. And still the Uraeus
snake--the asp whose bite caused almost instant death, reared its head as
the time-honored emblem of this privilege, by the side of St. George the
Dragon-slayer, over the palaces of the Mukaukas at Memphis, and at
Lykopolis in Upper Egypt. And in both these places the head of the family
retained the right of arbitrary judgment and capital punishment over the
retainers of his house and the inhabitants of the district he governed,
after Justinian first, and then the Emperor Heraclius, had confirmed them
in their old prerogative. The chivalrous St. George was placed between
the snakes so as to replace a heathen symbol by a Christian one. Formerly
indeed the knight himself had had the head of a sparrow-hawk: that is to
say of the god Horus, who had overthrown the evil-spirit, Seth-Typhon, to
avenge his father; but about two centuries since the heathen
crocodile-destroyer had been transformed into the Christian conqueror of
the dragon.

After the Arab conquest the Moslems had left all ancient customs and
rights undisturbed, including those of the Mukaukas.

The court which assembled to sit in judgment on all cases concerning the
adherents of the house consisted of the higher officials of the
governor's establishment. The Mukaukas himself was president, and his
grown-up son was his natural deputy. During Orion's absence, Nilus, the
head of the exchequer, a shrewd and judicious Egyptian, had generally
represented his invalid master; but on the present occasion Orion was
appointed to take his place, and to preside over the assembly.

The governor's son hastened to his father's bedroom to beg him to lend
him his ring as a token of the authority transferred to him; the Mukaukas
had willingly allowed him to take it off his finger, and had enjoined him
to exercise relentless severity. Generally he inclined to leniency; but
breaking into a house was punishable with death, and in this instance it
was but right to show no mercy, out of deference to the Arab merchant.
But Orion, m