Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/134

 has told the Shaykh of the five hundred piasters that were left for me at my house: I must send directly, and desire they may be returned—or, he knows about the tobacco that was brought me by the peasant; I had better get rid of it; and so on. Their peculations are past all bounds, and they must be kept under with a rod of iron.'

"There was Danna, the poor old Frenchman, who lost his trunk with all his doubloons in it: do you think he would ever have found them, if the Emir Beshyr had not sent Hamâady to that village about a league off—what do you call it?—where the robbery was committed ? He assembled all the peasants, men and women, and he told them—'Now, my friends, Monsieur Danna does not want anybody to be punished, if he can help it; therefore, you have only to produce the money, and nothing farther will be said: for the money was lost here, and some of you must know where it is.' To see what protestations of innocence there were, what asseverations! and from the women more than the men. So Hamâady, finding that talking was of no use, heated his red-hot irons and his copper skull caps, and produced his instruments of torture ; and, seeing that the women were more vociferous than the men, he selected one on whom strong suspicions had fallen, and drove a spike under her finger-nails. At the first thrust, she screamed out—' Let me off!