The unhappy youth had not wandered beyond the spacious gardens of his home, which, rising the height behind the house, were divided into terraces, along whose whole extent had been placed avenues of orange and lemon trees, planted in immense vases of red clay. Several of these, in which the plants had failed or perished, had been reversed to protect them from the weather; and one of them, dragged in the first paroxysm of terror to the mouth of an exhausted well, had served to screen the culprit from the gaze of his pursuers. But on this night, when by some extraordinary fatality, he forgot for an instant the caution which had hitherto been his protection, he clambered to the mouth of the pit as he heard the coming footsteps, and, pushing aside the vase, sprang out upon the path. The moonlight fell on him as he emerged from his concealment, pale, and haggard; his dark locks dank with the heavy atmosphere of his hiding-place, and his frame weakened by exhaustion. As he gained his feet and looked around him, his arms fell listlessly at his sides, and his head drooped upon his breast—He had no longer either strength or energy to wrestle with his fate; and he put his hands into the grasp of the armed men among whom he stood, and suffered himself to be led away from the home of his boyhood, and the clasp of his shrieking mother, with the docility of a child. The trial followed close upon the discovery of the lover. There was no hope for the wretched pair! Against them appeared the Imaum, stern, uncompromising, and circumstantial—the outraged husband, wrought to madness by the memory of his dishonour; and callous as marble—the faith which had been disgraced—society which had been scandalized. For them there were none to plead, save the grey-haired and widowed mother who wept and knelt to save her only son; but who asked his life in mercy, and not in justice. Did their youth sue for them? Did the soft loveliness of the guilty wife, or the manly beauty of the lover, raise them up advocates? Alas! these were their direst condemnation; and thus it only remained for them to die! It was at this period that my friend, the ——, first became connected with the affair. The family of the condemned woman, knowing his influence with the government, flung themselves at his feet, and implored his interference. They expatiated on the beauty of the misguided Fatma—on the personal qualifications of him by whose love she had fallen—they left no theme untouched; and he became deeply interested in her fate, and resolved that while a hope remained he would not abandon her cause. But he was fated to plead in vain; the crime had increased in the country; every Turkish breast heaved high with indignation; my friend urged, supplicated, and besought unheeded; and at length found himself unable to adduce another argument in her behalf.