ter. At
present I am a fugitive and exhausted. The bloodhounds track me, but
methinks I have baffled them now. I have slain an Ishmaelite.'

CHAPTER III

_The Hope of Israel_

IT WAS midnight. Alroy slept upon the couch: his sleep was troubled.
Jabaster stood by his side motionless, and gazing intently upon his
slumbering guest.

'The only hope of Israel,' murmured the Cabalist,' my pupil and my
prince! I have long perceived in his young mind the seed of mighty
deeds, and o'er his future life have often mused with a prophetic hope.
The blood of David, the sacred offspring of a solemn race. There is a
magic in his flowing veins my science cannot reach.

'When, in my youth, I raised our standard by my native Tigris, and
called our nation to restore their ark, why, we were numerous, wealthy,
potent; we were a people then, and they flocked to it boldly. Did we
lack counsel? Did we need a leader? Who can aver that Jabaster's brain
or arm was ever wanting? And yet the dream dissolved, the glorious
vision! Oh! when I struck down Marvan, and the Caliph's camp flung its
blazing shadow over the bloody river, ah! then indeed I lived. Twenty
years of vigil may gain a pardon that I then forgot we lacked the chief
ingredient in the spell, the blood that sleeps beside me.

'I recall the glorious rapture of that sacred strife amid the rocks of
Caucasus. A fugitive, a proscribed and outlawed wretch, whose life is
common sport, and whom the vilest hind may slay without a bidding. I,
who would have been Messiah!

'Burn thy books, Jabaster; break thy brazen tables; forget thy lofty
science, Cabalist, and read the stars no longer.[11] But last night
I stood upon the gulf which girds my dwelling: in one hand, I held my
sacred talisman, that bears the name ineffable; in the other, the mystic
record of our holy race. I remembered that I had evoked spirits, that I
had communed with the great departed, and that the glowing heavens were
to me a natural language. I recalled, as consolation to my gloomy soul,
that never had my science been exercised but for a sacred or a noble
purpose. And I remembered Israel, my brave, my chosen, and my antique
race, slaves, wretched slaves. I was strongly tempted to fling me down
this perilous abyss, and end my learning and my life together.

'But, as I gazed upon the star of David, a sudden halo rose around its
rays, and ever and anon a meteor shot from out the silver veil. I read
that there