ou to pay me back, so I shall not be
disappointed if you do not. Why should I?'

'Because--because--O God! No--never mind! You shall have all back.
Spirit of Elias! where is the black agate? Why is it not among
these?--The broken half of the black agate talisman!'

Raphael turned pale. 'How did you know that I have a black agate?'

'How did I? How did I not?' cried she, clutching him by the arm. 'Where
is it? All depends on that! Fool!' she went on, throwing him off from
her at arm's length, as a sudden suspicion stung her--'you have not
given it to the heathen woman?'

'By the soul of my fathers, then, you mysterious old witch, who seem to
know everything, that is exactly what I have done.'

Miriam clapped her hands together wildly. 'Lost! lost! lost! Not I will
have it, if I tear it out of her heart! I will be avenged of her--the
strange woman who flatters with her words, to whom the simple go in, and
know not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths
of hell! God do so to me, and more also, if she and her sorceries be on
earth a twelvemonth hence!'

'Silence, Jezebel! Heathen or none, she is as pure as the sunlight! I
only gave it her because she fancied the talisman upon it.'

'To enchant you with it, to your ruin!'

'Brute of a slave-dealer! you fancy every one as base as the poor
wretches whom you buy and sell to shame, that you may make them as much
the children of hell, if that be possible, as yourself!'

Miriam looked at him, her large black eyes widening and kindling. For an
instant she felt for her poniard--and then burst into an agony of tears,
hid her face in her withered hands, and rushed from the room, as a crash
and shout below announced the bursting of the door.

'There she goes with my jewels. And here come my guests, with the young
monk at their head.--One rising when the other sets. A worthy pair of
Dioscuri! Come, Bran!...Boys! Slaves! Where are you? Steal every one
what he can lay his hands on, and run for your lives through the back
gate.'

The slaves had obeyed him already. He walked smiling downstairs through
utter solitude, and in the front passage met face to face the mob of
monks, costermongers and dock-workers, fishwives and beggars, who were
thronging up the narrow entry, and bursting into the doors right and
left; and at their head, alas! the young monk who had just trampled the
necklace into the mud...no other, in fact, than Philammon.

'Welcome, my wort