CHAPTER XVIII.
THE LIGHT-BORN MESSENGER "Basha," said Israel--he spoke slowly and quietly; but with forced calmness--"Basha, you must seek another hand for work like that--this hand of mine shall never seal that warrant." "Tut, man!" whispered Ben Aboo.

"Do your new measles break out everywhere?
Am I not Kaid?
Can I not make you my Khaleefa ?" Israel's face was worn and pale, but his eye burned with the fire of his great resolve.
"Basha," he said again calmly and quietly, "if you were Sultan and could make me your Vizier, I would not do it." "Why ?" cried Ben Aboo; "why?
why ?" "Because," said Israel, "I am here to deliver up your seal to you." "You?
Grace of God!" cried Ben Aboo.
"I am here," continued Israel, as calmly as before, "to resign my office." "Resign your office?
Deliver up your seal ?" cried Ben Aboo.

"Man, man, are you mad ?" "No, Basha, not to-day," said Israel quietly.

"I must have been that when I came here first, five-and-twenty years ago." Ben Aboo gnawed his lip and scowled darkly, and in the flush of his anger, his consternation being over, he would have fallen upon Israel with torrents of abuse, but that he was smitten suddenly by a new and terrible thought.

Quivering and trembling, and muttering short prayers under his breath, he recoiled from the place where Israel stood, and said, "There is something under all this?
What is it?
Let me think! Let me think!" Meantime the face of Katrina beneath its covering of paint had grown white, and in scarcely smothered tones of wrath, by the swift instinct of a suspicious nature, she was asking herself the same question, "What does it mean?
What does it mean ?" In another moment Ben Aboo had read the riddle his own way.