“Let the prisoner be conveyed to the dungeon; on the morrow, at sunset, she must pay the death-penalty. Her own words have sealed her fate. Thus perish the enemies and mockers of our holy religion; thus shall the heathen learn that there is no God but God, and that Mahomet is his prophet!” These words were pronounced in a loud, stern voice; but the heart of the man of power failed within him, as he looked on the beautiful victim of the rigid laws of his country; and therefore it was that he caused to be made known to the father and the betrothed that the prison door would be open to them (contrary to the usual custom) all the following day. CHAPTER IV. And how were passed the flying hours of that last day, granted to the young and the beloved, on earth? In desperate and wild, but vain appeals, to her love of life—in still more mournful entreaties by her devotion to them who were the joy of her existence, that she would suffer them to bear her confession of penitence and faith to the pasha. It was pitiful to see the gray-haired father at one moment pleading her by every consideration, to take the words of the Mussulman upon her lips, even if her heart rebelled, and the next, when her gentle, but firmly expressed determination was reiterated, thanking God that He gave to her strength to remain firm in the face of every temptation. It was pitiful to see the hopeless, almost sullen agony of the younger man, as he sat beside the condemned all these wretched hours, clasping her hands within his own, and folding her so often to his bosom in a wordless embrace. Such tears were shed within that dismal cell as have no other source but broken hearts; such sighs were breathed as only the autumn breeze gives utterance to when the joy and the glory of earth is departing; such prayers ascended, as the heart of man can alone conceive when every earthly hope has failed, when the terrors of death, and the more terrible agonies of life surround the helpless soul! Once, when a chance word had called to mind the now almost forgotten, but despised and hated Orien Fez, Myrrah was on the point of revealing to Othniel the only cause she could conceive of his malice against her. But the reflection that such knowledge would only spur her beloved on to the committal of deeds which would end fatally to him, while it could not possibly avail even if made known to the prejudiced mind of the pasha, in securing her pardon and liberation—made her hesitate, and finally resolve in carrying that slight clue to the cause of her arrest, into the silence and oblivion of the grave. Only once did she take the name of the accuser on her lips, and then it was to implore Othniel to forgive him his part in their calamity, and to leave him to the mercy of God.