in order to avoid speaking of her daughter's false evidence; still, this
miserable business might easily have come to the ears of the stern old
man, and to the guilty youth no sacrifice seemed too great to smother any
enquiry for the ill-fated jewel. He unhesitatingly explained that the
emerald had disappeared, but that he was quite ready to make good its
value. Benjamin might fix his own estimate, and name any sum he wished
for some benevolent purpose, and he, Orion, was ready to pay it to him on
the spot.

The prelate, however, calmly persisted in his demand, enjoined Orion to
have a diligent search made for the gem, and declared that he regarded it
as the property of the Church. He added that, when his patience was at an
end, he should positively insist on its surrender and bring every means
at his disposal into play to procure it.

Orion had no choice but to say that he would prosecute his search for the
lost stone; but his acquiescence was sullen, as that of a man who accedes
to an unreasonable demand.

At first the patriarch took this coolly; but presently, when he rose to
take leave, his demeanor changed; he said, with stern solemnity:

"I know you now, Son of Mukaukas George, and I end as I began: The
humility of the Christian is far from you, you are ignorant of the power
and dignity of our Faith, you do not even know the vast love that
animates it, and the fervent longing to lead the straying sinner back to
the path of salvation.--Your admirable mother has told me, with tears in
her eyes, of the abyss over which you are standing. It is your desire to
bind yourself for life to a heretic, a Melchite--and there is another
thing which fills her pious mother's heart with fears, which tortures it
as she thinks of you and your eternal welfare. She promised to confide
this to my ear in church, and I shall find leisure to consider of it on
my return home; but at any rate, and be it what it may, it cannot more
greatly imperil your soul than marriage with a Melchite.

"On what have you set your heart? On the mere joys of earth! You sue for
the hand of an unbeliever, the daughter of an unbelieving heretic; you go
over to Fostat--nay, hear me out--and place your brain and your strong
arm at the service of the infidels--it is but yesterday; but I, I, the
shepherd of my flock, will not suffer that he who is the highest in rank,
the richest in possessions, the most powerful by the mere dignity of his
name, shall pervert t