ts
power. When Tepelenti covered his gray head with her long, thick,
flowing locks, he reposed behind them as in the shade of Paradise,
whither those heart-tormenting memories could not pursue him. Why
should he have lost her? She was the first of all, and the dearest;
but Fate at the last would not even leave him her.

Even now his thoughts went back to her. The pale light of that face,
that memory, lightened his solitary, darkened soul, which was as
desolate as the night outside.

But lo! it is as if the night grew brighter; a sort of errant light
glides along the walls and a gleam of sunshine breaks unexpectedly
through the open door of the room.

The pasha looked in that direction with amazement. Who could his
visitor be at that hour? Who is coming to drive the phantoms of
darkness from his room and from his heart?

A pale female form, with a smile upon her face and tears in her eyes,
appears before him. She comes right up to the spot where Tepelenti is
sitting on the ground. She places her torch in an iron sconce in the
wall and stands there before the pasha.

Ali looked at her sadly. He fancied that this also was only a dream
shape, only one of those apparitions created by a fevered mind, like
those which walked beside him headless and bloody. It was Eminah, at
whose word the devastating tempest had been unchained against the
mightiest of despots.

Tepelenti believed neither his eyes nor his heart when he saw her thus
before him. The damsel took the old man by the hand and called him by
his name, and even now the pasha believed that the warmth of that hand
and the sweetness of that voice were only part of a dream.

"Wherefore hast thou come?" he inquired in a whisper, or perchance he
did not ask but only dreamed that he asked.

Yet the gracious, childlike damsel was sitting there at his feet as at
other times, and she had pillowed his gray head upon her breast and
covered his face with the tent of her long tresses, as she had done
long, long ago in the happy times that were gone.

Oh, how sweet it would be to still live!

"Oh, Ali Tepelenti, let go the hand of Death from thy hand and grasp
my hand instead! See how warm it is! Oh, Ali Tepelenti, rise up from
among these barrels of gunpowder, and rather lay thy head upon my
breast; hearken how it beats! Oh, Ali Tepelenti, ask mercy from the
Sultan! See, now how lovely life is!"

Only at these words did Ali recover himself. His enemies had sought
out t