fashion, and we shall be satisfied.'

On this he addressed them. I hear now his melodious voice and witness his animated handsome face as he poured forth his rich unintelligible syllables. It was difficult to look at the fellow and not believe that he was some prince of his own nation. There was nothing in his scarecrow clothes to impair the dignity of his mien and the grace of his motions. I could conceive of him as a species of man-serpent capable of fascinating and paralyzing with his marvellous eyes, holding his victim motionless till he should choose to strike. His influence over the others was manifestly supreme, and I had no doubt whatever that the tragedy which had been enacted was his, and wholly his, by the claim of creation and command. While he talked I would here and there mark a dingy face with a look of expostulation in it. The lamp swinging fairly over the table yielded light enough to reveal expressions. When he had ceased there was a little hubbub of voices, a running growl so to speak of discontent. One cried out to him, and then another, and then a third, but in notes of expostulation rather than temper.

Helga, without turning her head, said to me:

'I expect they wish us to swear too. Your bare assurance does not satisfy them.'

The guess seemed a shrewd one, and highly probable, but the men's talk was sheer Hebrew to the four of us. Nakier listened, darting looks from side to side, then suddenly lifted both his hands in the most dramatic posture of denunciation that could be imagined, and hissed some word to them, whereupon every man fell as silent as though he had been shot. He picked up the volume and extended it to the fellow next him.

'Takee, takee,' he cried, speaking that we might understand. 'Lady, and you, sah, Misser Vise and Jacob my mate, this is the Mussulman oath we men now take. I speak not well your language, but dis is my speech in English of what you shall hear.' Then, composing his countenance and turning up his eyes till nothing gleamed but the whites of them in his dark visage, he exclaimed in a profoundly devotional tone and in accents as melodious as singing:

'In de name of Allah de most merciful, and de good Lord of all things, if break dis oath do I, den, O Allah, may I go to hell!'

He paused, then turned to the man who held the volume, who forthwith held the book at arm's length above his head and pronounced in his native tongue what we might suppose the oath that Nakier 

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