Towards this the girl was now conducted.
Merciful heavens! what could it mean?
I could only divine the intention by the circumstances that preceded it. These made it too clear for me not to comprehend the dread drama for which the stage was being set.
Rayas himself was to be the perpetrator. I saw him preparing for the grave deed!
I averted my eyes in disgust. I could not look either at the villain or his victim. The sight of the latter might have melted a heart of stone—any other than that of a brutal brigand. Her cries were of themselves sufficient to fill my heart with the acme of extreme bitterness.
I lay upon my back, gazing upwards to heaven. Was there no help to come from God? Had a thunderbolt from the sky struck me dead at that moment, I should have deemed it mercy. I prayed for death!
The faces of the two men who stood over me were lit up with smiles of fiendish delight. They saw my agony, and began to mock me with ribald words.
They were the last that either of them lived to utter. The one most forward in reviling, suddenly stopped in his speech, as if rebuked by something that had struck him in the face.
A stifled cry escaped from his lips; he tottered a moment on his legs, and then fell heavily by my side!
He had scarcely settled upon the ground before his confrère, dropping in like fashion, fell doubled over his body.