, those
very Saracens, whose heathenish worship he had conceived a crime
dishonourable to the land in which high miracles had been wrought, and
where the day-star of redemption had arisen.

The act of devotion, however, though rendered in such strange society,
burst purely from his natural feelings of religious duty, and had its
usual effect in composing the spirits which had been long harassed by
so rapid a succession of calamities. The sincere and earnest approach of
the Christian to the throne of the Almighty teaches the best lesson of
patience under affliction; since wherefore should we mock the Deity with
supplications, when we insult him by murmuring under His decrees?
or how, while our prayers have in every word admitted the vanity and
nothingness of the things of time in comparison to those of eternity,
should we hope to deceive the Searcher of Hearts, by permitting the
world and worldly passions to reassume the reins even immediately after
a solemn address to Heaven! But Sir Kenneth was not of these. He felt
himself comforted and strengthened, and better prepared to execute or
submit to whatever his destiny might call upon him to do or to suffer.

Meanwhile, the party of Saracens regained their saddles, and continued
their route, and the tale-teller, Hassan, resumed the thread of his
narrative; but it was no longer to the same attentive audience. A
horseman, who had ascended some high ground on the right hand of
the little column, had returned on a speedy gallop to El Hakim, and
communicated with him. Four or five more cavaliers had then been
dispatched, and the little band, which might consist of about twenty or
thirty persons, began to follow them with their eyes, as men from whose
gestures, and advance or retreat, they were to augur good or evil.
Hassan, finding his audience inattentive, or being himself attracted by
the dubious appearances on the flank, stinted in his song; and the
march became silent, save when a camel-driver called out to his patient
charge, or some anxious follower of the Hakim communicated with his next
neighbour in a hurried and low whisper.

This suspense continued until they had rounded a ridge, composed of
hillocks of sand, which concealed from their main body the object that
had created this alarm among their scouts. Sir Kenneth could now see,
at the distance of a mile or more, a dark object moving rapidly on the
bosom of the desert, which his experienced eye recognized for a par