in the
satisfaction he received from his master's presence, and continued
wagging his tail and licking his hand, even while by low moanings he
expressed that his agony was increased by the attempts which Sir Kenneth
made to withdraw from the wound the fragment of the lance or javelin
with which it had been inflicted; then redoubled his feeble endearments,
as if fearing he had offended his master by showing a sense of the pain
to which his interference had subjected him. There was something in
the display of the dying creature's attachment which mixed as a bitter
ingredient with the sense of disgrace and desolation by which Sir
Kenneth was oppressed. His only friend seemed removed from him, just
when he had incurred the contempt and hatred of all besides. The
knight's strength of mind gave way to a burst of agonized distress, and
he groaned and wept aloud.

While he thus indulged his grief, a clear and solemn voice, close beside
him, pronounced these words in the sonorous tone of the readers of the
mosque, and in the lingua franca mutually understood by Christians and
Saracens:--

"Adversity is like the period of the former and of the latter
rain--cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that
season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose,
and the pomegranate."

Sir Kenneth of the Leopard turned towards the speaker, and beheld the
Arabian physician, who, approaching unheard, had seated himself a little
behind him cross-legged, and uttered with gravity, yet not without a
tone of sympathy, the moral sentences of consolation with which the
Koran and its commentators supplied him; for, in the East, wisdom is
held to consist less in a display of the sage's own inventive talents,
than in his ready memory and happy application of and reference to "that
which is written."

Ashamed at being surprised in a womanlike expression of sorrow, Sir
Kenneth dashed his tears indignantly aside, and again busied himself
with his dying favourite.

"The poet hath said," continued the Arab, without noticing the knight's
averted looks and sullen deportment, "the ox for the field, and the
camel for the desert. Were not the hand of the leech fitter than that of
the soldier to cure wounds, though less able to inflict them?"

"This patient, Hakim, is beyond thy help," said Sir Kenneth; "and,
besides, he is, by thy law, an unclean animal."

"Where Allah hath deigned to bestow life, and a sense of pa