t blessed chance brings us together?"

"That chance is the destiny that hurries me to my tomb," answered
Almamen, solemnly. "Hark! hear you not the sound of their rushing
steeds--their impatient voices? They are on me now!"

"Who? Of whom speakest thou?"

"My pursuers--the horsemen of the Spaniard."

"Oh, senora, save him!" cried Leila, turning to Donna Inez, whom both
father and child had hitherto forgotten, and who now stood gazing upon
Almamen with wondering and anxious eyes. "Whither can he fly? The vaults
of the castle may conceal him. This way-hasten!"

"Stay," said Inez, trembling, and approaching close to Almamen: "do
I see aright? and, amidst the dark change of years and trial, do I
recognise that stately form, which once contrasted to the sad eye of a
mother the drooping and faded form of her only son? Art thou not he who
saved my boy from the pestilence, who accompanied him to the shores
of Naples, and consigned him to these arms? Look on me! dost thou not
recall the mother of thy friend?"

"I recall thy features dimly and as in a dream," answered the Hebrew;
"and while thou speakest, there rush upon me the memories of an earlier
time, in lands where Leila first looked upon the day, and her mother
sang to me at sunset by the stream of the Euphrates, and on the sites of
departed empires. Thy son--I remember now: I had friendship then with a
Christian--for I was still young."

"Waste not the time--father--senora!" cried Leila, impatiently clinging
still to her father's breast.

"You are right; nor shall your sire, in whom I thus wonderfully
recognise my son's friend, perish if I can save him."

Inez then conducted her strange guest to a small door in the rear of the
castle; and after leading him through some of the principal apartments,
left him in one of the tiring-rooms adjoining her own chamber, and the
entrance to which the arras concealed. She rightly judged this a safer
retreat than the vaults of the castle might afford, since her great
name and known intimacy with Isabel would preclude all suspicion of her
abetting in the escape of the fugitive, and keep those places the most
secure in which, without such aid, he could not have secreted himself.

In a few minutes, several of the troop arrived at the castle, and on
learning the name of its owner contented themselves with searching
the gardens, and the lower and more exposed apartments; and then
recommending to the servants a vigilant look-out r