The Bride of the Nile — Volume 02 eBook

Georg Ebers
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 86 pages of information about The Bride of the Nile — Volume 02.

The Bride of the Nile — Volume 02 eBook

Georg Ebers
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 86 pages of information about The Bride of the Nile — Volume 02.
and earth! what a howling and barking and yelping.  They poked their noses into every old rag, and now we knew where the hole in the wine-skin was.—­ I am sorry for the man.  He stammered horribly, but as a trainer, and in all that has to do with horses, all honor to him!—­The shoes are Hiram’s as surely as my eyes are in my head; but we have not caught him yet.  He is across the river, for a boat is missing and where it had been lying the dogs began again.  Unless the unbelievers over there give him shelter we are certain to have him.”

“Then we know who is the criminal!” cried Orion, with a sigh as deep as though some great burden were lifted from his soul.  Then he went on in a commanding tone—­and his voice rang so fiercely that the color which had mounted to his cheeks could hardly be due to satisfaction at this last good news....

“As it is not yet two hours after noon, send all your men out to search for him and deliver him up.  My father will give you a warrant, and the Arabs on the other shore will assist you.  Perhaps the thief may fall into our hands even sooner and with him the emerald, unless the rogue has succeeded in hiding it or selling it.”  Then his voice sank, and he added in a tone of regret.  It is a pity as concerns the man, we had not one in our stables who knew more about horses!  Fresh proof of your maxim, mother:  if you want to be well served you must buy rascals!”

“Strictly speaking,” said Neforis meditatively, “Hiram is not one of our people.  He was a freedman of Thomas’ and came here with his daughter.  Every one speaks highly of his skill in the stable; but for this robbery we might have kept him for the rest of his life still, if the girl had ever taken it into her head to leave us and to take him with her, we could not have detained him.—­You may say what you will, and abuse me and mock me; I have none of what you call imagination; I see things simply as they are:  but there must be some understanding between that girl and the thief.”

“You are not to say another word of such monstrous nonsense!” exclaimed her husband; and he would have said more, but that at that moment the groom of the chambers announced that Gamaliel, the Jewish goldsmith, begged an audience.  The man had come to give information with regard to the fate of the lost emerald.

At this statement Orion changed color, and he turned away from the merchant as the slave admitted the same Israelite who had been sitting over the fire with the head-servants.  He at once plunged into his story, telling it in his peculiar light-hearted style.  He was so rich that the loss he might suffer did not trouble him enough to spoil his good-humor, and so honest that it was a pleasure to him to restore the stolen property to its rightful owner.  Early that morning, so he told them, Hiram the groom had been to him to offer him a wonderfully large and splendid emerald for sale.  The freedman had assured him that the stone was part of the property left by the famous Thomas, his former master.  It had decorated the head-stall of the horse which the hero of Damascus had last ridden, and it had come to him with the steed.

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The Bride of the Nile — Volume 02 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.