is a choice emerald.
Thou mayst have wondered I should wear a bauble. Alroy, I had a brother
once: still he may live. When we parted, this was the signal of his
love: a love, my child, strong, though we greatly differed. Take it. The
hour may come that thou mayst need his aid. It will command it. If he
live, he prospers. I know his temper well. He was made for what the
worldly deem prosperity. God be with thee, sacred boy: the God of our
great fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob!'

They embraced.

'We linger,' exclaimed the Cabalist, 'we linger. Oh! in vain we quell
the feelings of our kind. God, God bless and be with thee! Art sure thou
hast all? thy dagger and thy wallet? That staff has seen some service.
I cut it on the Jordan. Ah! that I could be thy mate! 'Twould be nothing
then. At the worst to die together. Such a fate seems sweeter now than
parting. I'll watch thy star, my child. Thou weepest! And I too. Why!
what is this? Am I indeed Jabaster? One more embrace, and so----we'll
not say farewell, but only think it.'

CHAPTER IV.

_Alroy Falls Among Thieves_

TRADITION taught that the sceptre of Solomon could be found only in the
unknown sepulchres of the ancient Hebrew monarchs, and that none might
dare to touch it but one of their descendants. Armed with the cabalistic
talisman, which was to guide him in his awful and difficult researches,
Alroy commenced his pilgrimage to the Holy City. At this time, the love
of these sacred wanderings was a reigning passion among the Jews as well
as the Christians.

The Prince of the Captivity was to direct his course into the heart
of those great deserts which, in his flight from Hamadan, he had only
skirted. Following the track of the caravan, he was to make his way
to Babylon, or Bagdad. From the capital of the caliphs, his journey
to Jerusalem was one comparatively easy; but to reach Bagdad he must
encounter hardship and danger, the prospect of which would have
divested any one of hope, who did not conceive himself the object of an
omnipotent and particular Providence.

Clothed only in a coarse black frock, common among the Kourds, girded
round his waist by a cord which held his dagger, his head shaven, and
covered with a large white turban, which screened him from the heat, his
feet protected only by slippers, supported by his staff, and bearing on
his shoulders a bag of dried meat and parched corn, and a leathern skin
of water, behold,