“May it please your highness,” observed Mustapha, “he asserts his crime to have been committed in another state.  It may be heavy, and I suspect ’tis murder;—­but although we watch the flowers which ornament our gardens, and would punish those who cull them, yet we care not who intrudes and robs our neighbour—­and thus, it appears to me, your highness, that it is with states, and sufficient for the ruler of each to watch over the lives of his own subjects.”

“Very true, Mustapha,” rejoined the pacha; “besides, we might lose the story.  Kafir, you have our promise, and may proceed.”

The Greek slave (for such he was) then rose up, and narrated his story in the following words.

STORY OF THE GREEK SLAVE.

I am a Greek by birth; my parents were poor people residing at Smyrna.  I was an only son, and brought up to my father’s profession,—­that of a cooper.  When I was twenty years old, I had buried both my parents, and was left to shift for myself.  I had been for some time in the employ of a Jewish wine-merchant, and I continued there for three years after my father’s death, when a circumstance occurred which led to my subsequent prosperity and present degradation.

At the time that I am speaking of, I had, by strict diligence and sobriety, so pleased my employer, that I had risen to be his foreman; and although I still superintended and occasionally worked at the cooperage, I was intrusted with the drawing off and fining of the wines, to prepare them for market.  There was an Ethiopian slave, who worked under my orders, a powerful, broad-shouldered, and most malignant wretch, whom my master found it almost impossible to manage; the bastinado, or any other punishment, he derided, and after the application only became more sullen and discontented than before.  The fire that flashed from his eyes, upon any fault being found by me on account of his negligence, was so threatening, that I every day expected I should be murdered.  I repeatedly requested my master to part with him; but the Ethiopian being a very powerful man, and able, when he chose, to move a pipe of wine without assistance, the avarice of the Jew would not permit him to accede to my repeated solicitations.

One morning I entered the cooperage, and found the Ethiopian fast asleep by the side of a cask which I had been wanting for some time, and expected to have found ready.  Afraid to punish him myself, I brought my master to witness his conduct.  The Jew, enraged at his idleness, struck him on the head with one of the staves.  The Ethiopian sprang up in a rage, but on seeing his master with the stave in his hand, contented himself with muttering, “That he would not remain to be beaten in that manner,” and re-applied himself to his labour.  As soon as my master had left the cooperage, the Ethiopian vented his anger upon me for having informed against him, and seizing the stave, flew at me with the intention of beating out my brains.  I stepped behind the cask; he followed me, and just as I had seized an adze to defend myself, he fell over the stool which lay in his way—­he was springing up to renew the attack, when I struck him a blow with the adze which entered his skull, and laid him dead at my feet.