be
hatched, will swallow up both thee and thy realm."

Having said these words, the dervish turned him about, and without so
much as saluting the Padishah, without even taking off his slippers
before him, he withdrew, not even asking for a reward.

The Sultan was profoundly impressed by this audacity. He immediately
sent orders to the wardens of the two watch-towers at the entrance of
the Golden Horn to board and search thoroughly every vessel that
passed between them, seize every egg they found on board and bring
them to him, at the same time detaining all the crews of such vessels.

Fate so willed it that Dirham's was the first vessel that fell into
the hands of the searchers.

When the unfortunate servant perceived that the guards seized the
eggs, he leaped into the sea, and although he was a good swimmer, he
allowed himself to be suffocated in the water lest he should be
compelled to betray his masters.

The eggs they carried to the Sultan, and when he had opened them and
had read the writing written on their inner skins, he was horrified.
Treachery and rebellion! The conspiracy was spreading from one end of
the empire to the other. The complicated intrigue, one of whose
threads was in Janina and the other in the islands of the Archipelago,
had its third in the very capital. This called for terrible reprisals.

The beys were seized the same night in the midst of their joys, and
dragged from the paradise of their hopes to be thrown into a dungeon.

Who could have betrayed the secret of the eggs? they asked themselves.
Why, who else but Tepelenti?

Fools! to fancy that they could make a fool of Tepelenti!

Sulaiman fainted when they informed him that the secret of the eggs
was discovered. Mukhtar felt that the moment had come of which Ali had
said that the lowest slave would not then exchange heads with his two
sons, and in that hour of peril he bethought him of the talismanic
ring which had been sent to him. Hastily he removed the emerald,
believing that at least a quickly operative poison was contained
therein, by which he might be saved from a shameful death. There was,
however, no poison inside the ring, but these words were engraved
thereon, "Ye have fallen into the hands of Ali!"

Mukhtar dropped the ring; he was annihilated.

The hand of Ali, that implacable hand which reached from one end of
the world to the other, which clutched at him even out of the tomb--he
now felt all its weight upon his hea