, and would pounce out and murder me.
Convulsive tremors shook my frame like earthquake. Ah me, I fear I am
all too frail for this work. Yet dear is the love of life.

'_July 7_.--The last days I have passed in carefully searching the
grounds, with the lens as before. Ul-Jabal constantly found pretexts
for following me, and I am confident that every step I took was known
to him. No sign anywhere of the grass having been disturbed. Yet my
lands are wide, and I cannot be sure. The burden of this mighty task is
greater than I can bear. I am weaker than a bruised reed. Shall I not
slay my enemy, and make an end?

'_July_ 8.--Ul-Jabal has been in my chamber again! I watched him
through a crack in the panelling. His form was hidden by the bed, but I
could see his hand reflected in the great mirror opposite the door.
First, I cannot guess why, he moved to a point in front of the mirror
the chair in which I sometimes sit. He then went to the box in which
lie my few garments--and opened it. Ah, I have the stone--safe--safe!
He fears my cunning, ancient eyes, and has hidden it in the one place
where I would be least likely to seek it--_in my own trunk_! And yet I
dread, most intensely I dread, to look.

'_July_ 9.--The stone, alas, is not there! At the last moment he must
have changed his purpose. Could his wondrous sensitiveness of intuition
have made him feel that my eyes were looking in on him?

'_July 10_.--In the dead of night I knew that a stealthy foot had gone
past my door. I rose and threw a mantle round me; I put on my head my
cap of fur; I took the tempered blade in my hands; then crept out into
the dark, and followed. Ul-Jabal carried a small lantern which revealed
him to me. My feet were bare, but he wore felted slippers, which to my
unfailing ear were not utterly noiseless. He descended the stairs to
the bottom of the house, while I crouched behind him in the deepest
gloom of the corners and walls. At the bottom he walked into the
pantry: there stopped, and turned the lantern full in the direction of
the spot where I stood; but so agilely did I slide behind a pillar,
that he could not have seen me. In the pantry he lifted the trap-door,
and descended still further into the vaults beneath the house. Ah, the
vaults,--the long, the tortuous, the darksome vaults,--how had I
forgotten them? Still I followed, rent by seismic shocks of terror. I
had not forgotten the weapon: could I creep near enough, I felt that I
mig