ver spoke except to an Arab.'

Tancred covered his face with his hands. Then, after a few moments'
pause, looking up, he said, 'Sheikh of Sheikhs, I am your prisoner; and
was, when you captured me, a pilgrim to Mount Sinai, a spot which, in
your belief, is not less sacred than in mine. We are, as I have learned,
only two days' journey from that holy place. Grant me this boon, that I
may at once proceed thither, guarded as you will. I pledge you the word
of a Christian noble, that I will not attempt to escape. Long before
you have received a reply from Jerusalem, I shall have returned; and
whatever may be the result of the visit of Baroni, I shall, at least,
have fulfilled my pilgrimage.'

'Prince, brother of queens,' replied Amalek, with that politeness which
is the characteristic of the Arabian chieftains; 'under my tents you
have only to command; go where you like, return when you please. My
children shall attend you as your guardians, not as your guards.' And
the great Sheikh rose and retired.

Tancred re-entered his tent, and, reclining, fell into a reverie of
distracting thoughts. The history of his life and mind seemed with a
whirling power to pass before him; his birth, in clime unknown to the
Patriarchs; his education, unconsciously to himself, in an Arabian
literature; his imbibing, from his tender infancy, oriental ideas and
oriental creeds; the contrast that the occidental society in which he
had been reared presented to them; his dissatisfaction with that social
system; his conviction of the growing melancholy of enlightened Europe,
veiled, as it may be, with sometimes a conceited bustle, sometimes a
desperate shipwreck gaiety, sometimes with all the exciting empiricism
of science; his perplexity that, between the Asian revelation and the
European practice there should be so little conformity, and why the
relations between them should be so limited and imperfect; above all,
his passionate desire to penetrate the mystery of the elder world, and
share its celestial privileges and divine prerogative. Tancred sighed.

He looked round; some one had gently drawn his hand. It was the young
Emir kneeling, his beautiful blue eyes bedewed with tears.

'You are unhappy, said Fakredeen, in a tone of plaintiveness.

'It is the doom of man,' replied Tancred; 'and in my position sadness
should not seem strange.'

'The curse of ten thousand mothers on those who made you a prisoner; the
curse of twenty thousand mother