The ministers of death lingered yet awhile to convince themselves that the body would not reappear; and my friend lingered also from a feeling which he could not explain even to himself. The dawn was just breaking in the sky, and streaks of faint yellow were traced above the crests of the dark mountains of the Asian coast. One long ray of light touched the summits of the tall cypresses above the grave-yard of Isari, and revealed the castellated outline of the topmost tower of the Janissaries’ prison: there was not a breath of wind to scatter the ripple; and all around looked so calm and peaceful, that he could scarcely persuade himself that he had just looked on death, when the deep voices of the men in the caïques beside him, as they once more plunged their oars into the stream, and prepared to depart, aroused him from his reverie; and, motioning to his boatmen to proceed, he found himself ere long on the terrace of his own palace. While I am on the subject of executions, I may as well relate “an o’er true tale,” communicated to me by the same individual. Nearly four years have elapsed since the occurrence took place, but it is so characteristic of Turkish manners, that it will not be misplaced here. An eminent merchant of Stamboul, extremely wealthy, and considerably past the middle age, became the husband of a very young and lovely woman. As Turkish females never see the individuals whom they marry previously to the ceremony, but are chosen by some matronly relation of the person who finds it expedient to bestow himself on a wife, and who, having seen and approved the lady, arranges all preliminaries with her parents; so it may well be imagined that the bride is frequently far from congratulating herself on her change of position; and such, as it would appear from the result, was the case with the young wife to whom I have just referred, and who was destined to become the heroine of a frightful tragedy. Two years passed over Fatma Hanoum, and she became the mother of a son; but her heart was not with its father, and, unhappily for the weak victim of passion and disappointment, it had found a resting-place elsewhere. The merchant’s house was situated near a mosque, from the gallery of whose minaret all the windows of the harem were overlooked. The sun was setting on a glorious summer evening, when the Imaum ascended to this gallery, to utter the shrill cry of the muezzin which summons the faithful to prayer. Ere he commenced the invocation, he chanced to glance downwards, and he started as he beheld a man, clinging to a shawl which had been flung from above, and making his way into the harem of the merchant through an open window. Nor was this all, for the quick and jealous eye of the Imaum at once assured him that the delinquent was a Greek—that the wife of a Musselmaun had stooped to accept the love of a Christian—and he well knew that, in such a case, there was no mercy for the culprit.