Presently they appeared again with a figure in the verge of sunlight, towering over their woolly gleam.

I saw Sûr Imar's noble face, as calm as when he smiled on me, and blessed me with his daughter. His hands were roped behind his back, his silvery curls uncovered, and his broad white chest laid naked; except that the red cross hung upon it, in which he wore some of his dead wife's hair. Two of the men stretched spears behind him, as if he would shrink from the steps of death; but he walked as if he were coming to welcome some expected visitor, bowed his head without a word, and laid his breast against the bar. There they cast a broad shackle round him and made it fast behind his back; while a pompous dotard stood forth the door, and read (or made believe read) the verdict of his brother idiots. As he finished, my pistol muzzle lay true upon the foremost of them; the man who first put hand to kinjal would never have put it to his mouth again.

Then to my surprise, they all withdrew, cackling in their crock-saw throats, while that old fiend showed his gums like a rat-trap, grinning through his rheumy scrub. And the sound of tongues up the valley ceased; and the blowing of horns, and the shrilling of fifes; and the only thing that I could hear was the slow beat of a sheepskin drum, to call the savages to the death, and the rapid thumps of my own heart.

Listening for the fatal step, I fixed my eyes once more upon the bound and helpless victim. Perhaps to reduce his well-known strength, or to lower his high courage, the affectionate sister had kept in his body just life enough to last till he should be killed. His ribs stood forth, and his cheeks were meagre, and the eyes looked worn and sunken; but there was not a sign of fear or flinching, no twitch or quiver in the smooth white forehead, and not so much as a palpitation in the broad breast laid against the bar. Like a fool I raised my hand a little and tried to attract his notice, but he kept his calm gaze towards his foes; until a low heart-broken wail from an inner cell of the caverned rock told of a sorrow beyond his own. Then for a moment he turned his head, and spoke some words of comfort perhaps, or of love and long farewell, to the one who could not come to him, or perhaps not even hear him; and I hoped in the Lord of mercy that she could not see her father. At the thought of that possibility even, hot as I was, my blood ran cold. Could any woman exist who would set such a sight before a woman?

Suddenly a glow of deep amazement shone in Imar's haggard eyes. With a wrench of his mighty frame he shook the steel bar like a ribbon, the shackles on his chest gave way a little, and his grand face issued from the gloom of granite into the testimony of the sun. Then the strong aspect and vivid lines—as firm as the cliff to confront their doom—relaxed and softened, and grew bright, as if memory forgot its age, and went back upon its years, to have a play with tender visions.

"Oria, come at last!" he cried, with a smile to tempt her nearer; "my Oria sent to call me home! The God, who has done this for me, will take care of my daughter!"

Before him stood—betwixt him and me, although I had heard no footsteps—a tall young figure in a long white robe, timid as a woman, and as graceful; but with supple strength quivering for the will to man it. On the left hip hung a heavy sword; but the right hand had fallen away from the hilt, and the shoulders lay back with the sudden arrest. "My son, my son, it is just," cried Imar; "slay me, as I slew thy mother."

Then the shackled man turned his head away, that his eyes should make no plea for him, and nature's dread could be seen in nothing but the quiver of his long arched throat.

But the young man stood as if carved in stone, with both arms stretched to his father, unable to take another step, unable to do anything but wonder.

But betwixt their gaze a dark form leaped, quivering with fury, and wild for blood, too ravenous for slaughter to have formed a proper plan of it. And this was a very lucky thing for me.