e same moment the Monarch darted another impatient glance to the
spot, and all retreated in haste, leaving the dervise on the ground,
unable, as it seemed, to stir a single limb or joint of his body. In a
moment afterward all was as still and quiet as it had been before the
intrusion.

CHAPTER XXI

--and wither'd Murder,
Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost.
MACBETH.

For the space of a quarter of an hour, or longer, after the incident
related, all remained perfectly quiet in the front of the royal
habitation. The King read and mused in the entrance of his pavilion;
behind, and with his back turned to the same entrance, the Nubian slave
still burnished the ample pavesse; in front of all, at a hundred paces
distant, the yeomen of the guard stood, sat, or lay extended on the
grass, attentive to their own sports, but pursuing them in silence,
while on the esplanade betwixt them and the front of the tent lay,
scarcely to be distinguished from a bundle of rags, the senseless form
of the marabout.

But the Nubian had the advantage of a mirror from the brilliant
reflection which the surface of the highly-polished shield now afforded,
by means of which he beheld, to his alarm and surprise, that the
marabout raised his head gently from the ground, so as to survey all
around him, moving with a well-adjusted precaution which seemed entirely
inconsistent with a state of ebriety. He couched his head instantly, as
if satisfied he was unobserved, and began, with the slightest possible
appearance of voluntary effort, to drag himself, as if by chance, ever
nearer and nearer to the King, but stopping and remaining fixed at
intervals, like the spider, which, moving towards her object, collapses
into apparent lifelessness when she thinks she is the subject of
observation. This species of movement appeared suspicious to the
Ethiopian, who, on his part, prepared himself, as quietly as possible,
to interfere, the instant that interference should seem to be necessary.

The marabout, meanwhile, glided on gradually and imperceptibly,
serpent-like, or rather snail-like, till he was about ten yards distant
from Richard's person, when, starting on his feet, he sprung forward
with the bound of a tiger, stood at the King's back in less than an
instant, and brandished aloft the