The Arab’s mild features wore a look of extreme gravity, and deep vexation could be read in his kindly eyes.  As the young man entered he bowed slightly; they had already met that morning.  The Mukaukas, who was lying deathly pale with colorless lips, scarcely opened his eyes at his son’s greeting.  It might have been thought that a bier was waiting in the next room and that the mourners had assembled here.

The piece of work was only half unrolled, but Orion at once saw the spot whence its crowning glory was now missing—­the large emerald which, as he alone could know, was on its way to Constantinople.  His theft had been discovered.  How fearful, how fatal might the issue be!

“Courage, courage!” he said to himself.  “Only preserve your presence of mind.  What profit is life with loss of honor?  Keep your eyes open; everything depends on that, Orion!”

He succeeded in hastily collecting his thoughts, and exclaimed in a voice which lacked little of its usual eager cheerfulness: 

“How dismal you all look!  It is indeed a terrible disaster that the dog should have handled the poor girl so roughly, and that our people should have behaved so outrageously; but, as I told you this morning, worthy Merchant, the guilty parties shall pay for it with their lives.  My father, I am sure, will agree that you should deal with them according to your pleasure, and our leech Philippus, in spite of his youth, is a perfect Hippocrates I can assure you!  He will patch up the fine fellow—­your head-man I mean, and as to any question of compensation, my father—­well, you know he is no haggler.”

“I beg you not to add insult to the injury that I have suffered under your roof,” interrupted Haschim.  “No amount of money can buy off my wrath over the spilt blood of a friend—­and Rustem was my friend—­a free and valiant youth.  As to the punishment of the guilty:  on that I insist.  Blood cries for blood.  That is our creed; and though yours, to be sure, enjoins the contrary, so far as I know you act by the same rule as we.  All honor to your physician; but it goes to my heart, and raises my gall to see such things take place in the house of the man to whom the Khaliff has confided the weal or woe of Egyptian Christians.  Your boasted tolerance has led to the death of an honest though humble man in a time of perfect peace—­or at least maimed him for life.  As to your honesty, it would seem. . .”

“Who dares impugn it?” cried Orion.

“I, young man,” replied the merchant with the calm dignity of age.  “I, who sold this piece of work last evening, and find it this morning robbed of its most precious ornament.”

“The great emerald has been cut from the hanging during the night.”  Dame Neforis explained.  “You yourself went with the man who carried it to the tablinum and saw it laid there.”

“And in the very cloth in which your people had wrapped it,” added Orion.  “Our good old Sebek there was with me.  Who fetched away the bale this morning; who brought it here and opened it?”