red to
accompany him, the flight did not seem shameful in his eyes. Nay, it
became necessary; and under the circumstances it was, indeed,
cowardice not to fly. For is it not as noble to surrender one's self
to Love as to the Turks or any other earthly despotism? Gladly,
heroically, he adventures forth, therefore, and philosophizes on the
way about the light that flows from the wounds of persecution. But we
regret that this celestial stream is not unmixed; it is accompanied by
blood and pus; by distention and fever, and other inward and outward
sores.

In this grievous state, somewhat like Don Quixote after the Battle of
the Mill, our Khalid enters Baalbek. If the reader likes the
comparison between the two Knights at this juncture, he must work it
out for himself. We can not be so uncharitable as that; especially
that our Knight is a compatriot, and is now, after our weary
journeyings together, become our friend.--Our poor grievous friend who
must submit again to the surgeon's knife.

Mrs. Gotfry would not let him go to his mother, for she herself would
nurse him. So, the doctor is called to the Hotel. And after opening,
disinfecting, and dressing the wounds, he orders his patient to keep
in bed for some days. They will then visit the ruins and resume their
journeying to Egypt. Khalid no longer would live in Syria,--in a
country forever doomed to be under the Turkish yoke, faring, nay,
misfaring alike in the New Era as in the Old.

Now, his mother, tottering with age and sorrow, comes to the Hotel,
and begs him in a flood of tears to come home; for his father is now
with the Jesuits of Beirut and seldom comes to Baalbek. And his cousin
Najma, with a babe on her arm and a tale of woe in her eyes, comes
also to invite her cousin Khalid to her house.

She is alone; her father died some months ago; her husband,
after the dethronement of Abd'ul-Hamid, being implicated in
the reaction-movement, fled the country; and his relatives, to
add to her affliction, would deprive her of her child. She is
alone; and sick in the lungs. She coughs, too, the same sharp,
dry, malignant cough that once plagued Khalid. Ay, the same
disease which he buried in the pine forest of Mt. Lebanon, he
beholds the ghost of it now, more terrible and heart-rending
than anything he has yet seen or experienced. The disease which
he conquered is come back in the person of his cousin Najma to
conquer him. And who can assure Khalid that it did not steal