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THE LION IN THE NET.
IT was the next night, not long before daybreak, that the King of Granada abruptly summoned to his council Jusef, his vizier.

The old man found Boabdil in great disorder and excitement; but he almost deemed his sovereign mad, when he received from him the order to seize upon the person of Muza Ben Abil Gazan, and to lodge him in the strongest dungeon of the Vermilion Tower.

Presuming upon Boabdil's natural mildness, the vizier ventured to remonstrate,--to suggest the danger of laying violent hands upon a chief so beloved,--and to inquire what cause should be assigned for the outrage.
The veins swelled like cords upon Boabdil's brow, as he listened to the vizier; and his answer was short and peremptory.
"Am I yet a king, that I should fear a subject, or excuse my will?
Thou hast my orders; there are my signet and the firman: obedience or the bow-string!" Never before had Boabdil so resembled his dread father in speech and air; the vizier trembled to the soles of his feet, and withdrew in silence.

Boabdil watched him depart; and then, clasping his hands in great emotion, exclaimed, "O lips of the dead! ye have warned me; and to you I sacrifice the friend of my youth." On quitting Boabdil the vizier, taking with him some of those foreign slaves of a seraglio, who know no sympathy with human passion outside its walls, bent his way to the palace of Muza, sorely puzzled and perplexed.