saries! Thou dog of a kafir--thou son of Shitan--and dare avow
it! Call in the executioner."

"Mercy! your sublime highness, mercy!" cried the Greek--"Have I not your
promise by the sword of the Prophet? Besides, he was no true believer,
or he would not have disobeyed the law. A good Mussulman will never
touch a drop of wine."

"I promised to forgive, and did forgive, the murder of the black slave;
but an aga of janissaries!--Is not that quite another thing?" appealed
the pacha to Mustapha.

"Your highness is just in your indignation--the kafir deserves to be
impaled. Yet there are two considerations which your slave ventures to
submit to your sublime wisdom. The first is, that your highness gave an
unconditional promise, and swore by the sword of the Prophet."

"Staffir Allah! what care I for that! Had I sworn to a true believer,
it were something."

"The other is, that the slave has not yet finished his story which
appears to be interesting."

"Wallah! that is true. Let him finish his story."

But the Greek slave remained with his face on the ground; and it was not
until a renewal of the promise, sworn upon the holy standard made out of
the nether garments of the Prophet, by the pacha who had recovered his
temper, and was anxious for the conclusion of the story, that he could
be induced to proceed, which he did as follows:--

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As soon as I had bunged up the cask, I went down to the yard where the
aga had left his horse, and having severely wounded the poor beast with
his sword, I let it loose that it might gallop home. The noise of the
horse's hoofs in the middle of the night, aroused his family, and when
they discovered that it was wounded and without its rider, they imagined
that the aga had been attacked and murdered by banditti when he had
followed his troop. They sent to me to ask at what time he had left my
house; I replied, an hour after dark--that he was very much intoxicated
at the time--and had left his sabre, which I returned. They had no
suspicion of the real facts, and it was believed that he had perished on
the road.

I was now rid of my dangerous acquaintance; and although he certainly
had drank a great quantity of my wine yet I recovered the value of it
with interest, from the flavour which I obtained from his body and which
I imparted to the rest of my stock. I raised him up alongside of the
two other cask