'How did you know that I have a black agate ?' 'How did I?
How did I not ?' cried she, clutching him by the arm.

'Where is it?
All depends on that! Fool!' she went on, throwing him off from her at arm's length, as a sudden suspicion stung her--'you have not given it to the heathen woman ?' 'By the soul of my fathers, then, you mysterious old witch, who seem to know everything, that is exactly what I have done.' Miriam clapped her hands together wildly.

'Lost! lost! lost! Not I will have it, if I tear it out of her heart! I will be avenged of her--the strange woman who flatters with her words, to whom the simple go in, and know not that the dead are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell! God do so to me, and more also, if she and her sorceries be on earth a twelvemonth hence!' 'Silence, Jezebel! Heathen or none, she is as pure as the sunlight! I only gave it her because she fancied the talisman upon it.' 'To enchant you with it, to your ruin!' 'Brute of a slave-dealer! you fancy every one as base as the poor wretches whom you buy and sell to shame, that you may make them as much the children of hell, if that be possible, as yourself!' Miriam looked at him, her large black eyes widening and kindling.

For an instant she felt for her poniard--and then burst into an agony of tears, hid her face in her withered hands, and rushed from the room, as a crash and shout below announced the bursting of the door.
'There she goes with my jewels.

And here come my guests, with the young monk at their head .-- One rising when the other sets.