He said this distinctly, but what followed was harder to understand; for the passionate suitor was in great haste and often interrupted his hasty sentences to assure Kasana, to whose hands in this hour he was committing his life and liberty, of his changeless love, or to soothe her when the boldness of his advances awakened fear and aversion.

But he soon began to speak of the letter whose bearer Ephraim had been and, after reading it aloud and explaining it, the youth realized with a slight shudder that he had become an accomplice in the most criminal of all plots, and for a moment the longing stole over him to betray the traitors and deliver them into the hand of the mighty sovereign whose destruction they were plotting.

But he repelled the thought and merely sunned himself in the pleasurable consciousness--the first during this cruel hour-of holding Kasana and her royal lover in his hand as one holds a beetle by a string.

This had a favorable effect on him and restored the confidence and courage he had lost.

The baser the things he continued to hear, the more clearly he learned to appreciate the value of the goodness and truth which he had lost.