e.'

'And so art thou, lad! Wouldst have me merry? Pale! we may well be pale,
didst thou know all. Hah! that awful sound again! I cannot bear it,
Pharez, I cannot bear it. I have borne many things, but this I cannot.'

'My lord, 'tis in the Armoury.'

'Run, see. No, I'll not be alone. Where's Benaiah? Let him go. Stay with
me, Pharez, stay with me. I pray thee stay, my child.'

Pharez led the Caliph to a couch, on which Alroy lay pale and trembling.
In a few minutes he inquired whether Benaiah had returned.

'Even now he comes, Sire.'

'Well, how is it?'

'Sire! a most awful incident. As the thunder broke over the palace, the
sacred standard fell from its resting-place, and has shivered into a
thousand pieces. Strange to say, the sceptre of Solomon can neither be
found nor traced.'

'Say nothing of the past, as ye love me, lads. Let none enter the
Armoury. Leave me, Benaiah, leave me, Pharez.'

They retired. Alroy watched their departure with a glance of
inexpressible anguish. The moment that they had disappeared, he flew to
the couch, and throwing himself upon his knees, and, covering his face
with his hands, burst into passionate tears, and exclaimed, 'O! my God,
I have deserted thee, and now thou hast deserted me!'

Sleep crept over the senses of the exhausted and desperate Caliph. He
threw himself upon the divan, and was soon buried in profound repose. He
might have slept an hour; he awoke suddenly. From the cabinet in which
he slept, you entered a vast hall, through a lofty and spacious
arch, generally covered with drapery, which was now withdrawn. To the
astonishment of Alroy, this presence-chamber appeared at this moment
to blaze with light. He rose from his couch, he advanced; he perceived,
with feelings of curiosity and fear, that the hall was filled with
beings, terrible indeed to behold, but to his sight more terrible than
strange. In the colossal and mysterious forms that lined the walls
of the mighty chamber, and each of which held in its extended arm a
streaming torch, he recognised the awful Afrites. At the end of the
hall, upon a sumptuous throne, surrounded by priests and courtiers,
there was seated a monarch, on whom Alroy had before gazed, Solomon the
Great! Alroy beheld him in state and semblance the same Solomon, whose
sceptre the Prince of the Captivity had seized in the royal tombs of
Judah.

The strange assembly seemed perfectly unconscious of the presence of the
child of Earth, who