A few minutes later he entered the judgment-hall.  Nilus the treasurer showed him to the governor’s raised seat, but an overpowering bashfulness kept him from taking this position of honor.  It was with a burning brow, and looks so ominously dark that the assembly gazed at him with timid astonishment, that he opened the proceedings with a few broken sentences.  He himself scarcely knew what he was saying, and heard his own voice as vaguely as though it were the distant roar of waves.  However, he succeeded in clearly stating all that had happened:  he showed the assembly the stone which had been stolen and recovered; he explained how the thief had been taken; he declared Paula’s freedman to be guilty of the robbery, and called upon him to bring forward anything he could in his own defence.  But the accused could only stammer out that he was not guilty.  He was not able to defend himself, but his mistress could no doubt give evidence that would justify him.

Orion pushed the hair from his forehead, proudly raised his aching head, and addressed the judges: 

“His mistress is a lady of rank allied to our house.  Let us keep her out of this odious affair as is but seemly.  Her nurse gave Nilus some information which may perhaps avail to save this unhappy man.  We will neglect nothing to that end; but you, who are less familiar with the leading circumstances, must bear this in mind to guard yourselves against being misled:  This lady is much attached to the accused; she clings to him and Perpetua as the only friends remaining to her from her native home.  Moreover, there is nothing to surprise me or you in the fact that a noble woman, as she is, should assume the onus of another’s crime, and place herself in a doubtful light to save a man who has hitherto been honest and faithful.  The nurse is here; shall she be called, or have you, Nilus, heard from her everything that her mistress can say in favor of her freedman?”

“Perpetua told me, and told you, too, my lord, certain credible facts,” replied the treasurer.  “But I could not repeat them so exactly as she herself, and I am of opinion that the woman should be brought before the court.”

“Then call her,” said Orion, fixing his eyes on vacancy above the heads of the assembly, with a look of sullen dignity.

After a long and anxious pause the old woman was brought in.  Confident in her righteous cause she came forward boldly; she blamed Hiram somewhat sharply for keeping silence so long, and then explained that Paula, to procure money for her search for her father, had made the freedman take a costly emerald out of its setting in her necklace, and that it was the sale of this gem that had involved her fellow-countryman in this unfortunate suspicion.

The nurse’s deposition seemed to have biased the greater part of the council in favor of the accused; but Orion did not give them time to discuss their impressions among themselves.  Hardly had Perpetua ceased speaking, when Orion took up the emerald, which was lying on the table before him, exclaiming excitedly, nay, angrily: