suspending it entirely, hold an offending wretch alive for a period
already encroaching upon the eternal? One less firmly rooted in the
faith of his fathers would have stood aghast at the conclusion to which
the answer as an argument led--a conclusion admitting no escape once it
was reached. The affair in hand, however, despite its speculative side,
was real and urgent; and the keeper of the stall, remembering the
messenger in half imprisonment, fell to thinking of the practical
questions before him; first of which was the treatment he should accord
his correspondent's requests.

This did not occupy him long. His father, he reflected, would have
received the stranger cordially, and as became one of such close
intimacy; so should he. The requests were easy, and carried no pecuniary
liability with them; he was merely to aid an inexperienced servant in
the purchase of a dwelling-house, the servant having plenty of funds.
True, when the master presented himself in person, it would be necessary
to determine exactly the footing to be accorded him; but for the present
that might be deferred. If, in the connection, the son of Jahdai dwelt
briefly upon possible advantages to himself, the person being presumably
rich and powerful, it was human, and he is to be excused for it.

The return to the market was less hurried than the going from it. There
Uel acted promptly. He took Syama to his house, and put him into the
guest-chamber, assuring him it was a pleasure. Yet when night came he
slept poorly. The incidents of the day were mixed with much that was
unaccountable, breaking the even tenor of his tradesman's life by
unwonted perplexities. He had not the will to control his thoughts; they
would go back to the excitement of the moment when he believed the
medallion lost; and as points run together in the half-awake state on
very slender threads, he had a vision of a mysterious old man coming