As Ali reflected how the storm he had raised could best be laid, he was
informed that the ruler of the marriage feast sent by Moustai, Pacha of
Scodra, to receive the young bride who should reign in his harem, had
just arrived in the plain of Janina. He was Yussuf Bey of the Delres,
an old enemy of Ali's, and had encamped with his escort of eight hundred
warriors at the foot of Tomoros of Dodona. Dreading some treachery, he
absolutely refused all entreaties to enter the town, and Ali seeing that
it was useless to insist, and that his adversary for the present was
safe, at once sent his grand-daughter, the Princess of Aulis, out to
him.

This matter disposed of, Ali was able to attend to his hideous family
tragedy. He began by effecting the disappearance of the women whom he
had been compelled to make his accomplices; they were simply sewn up in
sacks by gipsies and thrown into the lake. This done, he himself led
the executioners into a subterranean part of the castle, where they were
beheaded by black mutes as a reward for their obedience. He then sent a
doctor to Zobeide; who succeeded in causing a miscarriage, and who,
his work done, was seized and strangled by the black mutes who had just
beheaded the gipsies. Having thus got rid of all who could bear witness
to his crime, he wrote to Veli that he might now send for his wife
and two of his children, hitherto detained as hostages, and that the
innocence of Zobeide would confound a calumniator who had dared to
assail him with such injurious suspicions.

When this letter arrived, Pacho Bey, distrusting equally the treachery
of the father and the weakness of the son, and content with having sown
the seeds of dissension in his enemy's family, had sufficient wisdom to
seek safety in flight. Ali, furious, vowed, on hearing this, that his