the bed and fling her on the ground before his father's eyes; but grief
and astonishment seemed to have paralyzed his whole being; he had not
even the power to interrupt her with a single word.

She had spoken, and all was told.

He clung to the couch like a shattered wretch; and when his father turned
his eyes on him and gasped out: "Then the Court--our Court of justice
pronounced an unrighteous sentence?" he bowed his head in contrition.

The dying man murmured even less articulately and incoherently than
before: "The gem--the hanging--you, you perhaps--was it you? that
emerald--I cannot. . ."

Orion helped his father in his vain efforts to utter the dreadful words.
Sooner would he have died with the old man than have deceived him in such
a moment; he replied humbly and in a low voice:

"Yes, Father--I took it. But as surely as I love you and my mother this,
the first reckless act of my life, which has brought such horrors in its
train. . . Shall be the last," he would have said; but the words "I took
it," had scarcely passed his lips when his father was shaken by a violent
trembling, the expression of his eyes changed fearfully, and before the
son had spoken his vow to the end the unhappy father was, by a tremendous
effort, sitting upright. Loud sobs of penitence broke from the young
man's heaving breast, as the Mukaukas wrathfully exclaimed, in thick
accents, as quickly as the heavy, paralyzed tongue would allow:

"You, you! A disgrace to our ancient and blameless Court! You?--Away with
you! A thief, an unjust judge, a false witness,--and the only descendant
of Menas! If only these hands were able--you--you--Go, villain!" And with
this wild outcry, George, the gentle and just Mukaukas, sank back on his
pillows; his bloodshot eyes were staring, fixed on vacancy; his gasping
lips repeated again and again, but less and less audibly the one word
"Villain;" his swollen fingers clutched at the light coverlet that lay
over him; a strange, shrill wheezing came through his open mouth, and the
heavy corpse of the great dignitary fell, like a falling palm-tree, into
Orion's arms.

Orion started up, his eyes inflamed, his hair all dishevelled, and shook
the dead man as though to compel him back to life again, to hear his oath
and accept his vow, to see his tears of repentance, to pardon him and
take back the name of infamy which had been his parting word to his loved
and spoilt child.

In the midst of this wild outbre