irth and for a thousand days of misery, and presently they
will go tired and happy to bed. I could envy these poor creatures! If it
were permissible I would join them and be a child again."

The comic portrait of the overseer was by this time finished, and a
short, stout wench burst into a fit of uproarious and unquenchable
laughter before any of the rest. It came so naturally, too, from the
very depths of her plump little body that Paula, who had certainly not
come hither to be gay, suddenly caught the infection and had to laugh
whether she would or no. Sorrow and anxiety were suddenly forgotten,
thought and calculation were far from her; for some minutes she felt
nothing but that she, too, was laughing heartily, irrepressibly, like
the young healthful human creature that she was. Ah, how good it was
thus to forget herself for once! She did not put this into words, but
she felt it, and she laughed afresh when the girl who had been
sitting apart joined the others, and exclaimed something which was
unintelligible to Paula, but which gave a new impetus to their mirth.

The tall slight form of this maiden was now standing by the fire. Paula
had never seen her before and yet she was by far the handsomest of them
all; but she did not look happy and perhaps was in some pain, for she
had a handkerchief over her head which was tied at the top over the
thick fair hair as though she had the toothache. As she looked at her
Paula recovered herself, and as soon as she began to think merriment was
at an end. The slave-girls were not of this mind; but their laughter
was less innocent and frank than it had been; for it had found an object
which they would have done better to pass by.

The girl with the handkerchief over her head was a slave too, but she
had only lately come into the weaving-sheds after being employed for a
long time at needle work under two old women, widows of slaves. She had
been brought as an infant from Persia to Alexandria with her mother, by
the troops of Heraclius, after the conquest of Chosroes II.; and they
had been bought together for the Mukaukas. When her little one was but
thirteen the mother died under the yoke to which she was not born; the
child was a sweet little girl with a skin as white as the swan and thick
golden hair, which now shone with strange splendor in the firelight.
Orion had remarked her before his journey, and fascinated by the beauty
of the Persian girl, had wished to have her for his o