your
honesty, it would seem..."

"Who dares impugn it?" cried Orion.

"I, young man," replied the merchant with the calm dignity of age.
"I, who sold this piece of work last evening, and find it this morning
robbed of its most precious ornament."

"The great emerald has been cut from the hanging during the night." Dame
Neforis explained. "You yourself went with the man who carried it to the
tablinum and saw it laid there."

"And in the very cloth in which your people had wrapped it," added
Orion. "Our good old Sebek there was with me. Who fetched away the bale
this morning; who brought it here and opened it?"

"Happily for us," said the Arab, "it was your lady mother herself, with
that man--your steward if I mistake not--and your own slaves."

"Why was it not left where it was?" asked Orion, giving vent to the
annoyance which at this moment he really felt.

"Because I had assured your father, and with good reason, that the
beauty of this splendid work and of the gems that decorate it show to
much greater advantage by daylight and in the sunshine than under the
lamps and torches."

"And besides, your father wished to see his new purchase once more,"
Neforis broke in, "and to ask the merchant how the gems might be removed
without injury to the work itself. So I went to the tablinum myself with
Sebek."

"But I had the key!" cried Orion putting his hand into the breast of his
robe.

"That I had forgotten," replied his mother. "But unfortunately we did
not need it. The tablinum was open."

"I locked it yesterday; you saw me do it, Sebek..."

"So I told the mistress," replied the steward. "I perfectly recollect
hearing the snap of the strong lock."

Orion shrugged his shoulders, and his mother went on:

"But the bronze doors must have been opened during the night with a
false key, or by some other means; for part of the hanging had been
pulled out of the wrapper, and when we looked closely we saw that the
large emerald had been wrenched out of the setting."

"Shameful!" exclaimed Orion.

"Disgraceful!" added the governor, vehemently starting up. He had
fallen a prey to fearful unrest and horror: he thought that his Lord and
Saviour, to whom he had dedicated the precious jewel, regarded him as so
sinful and worthless that He would not accept the gift at his hands. But
perhaps it was only Satan striving to hinder him from approaching the
Most High with so noble an offering. At any rate, human cunning had be