he was in a country not unknown to him.

The blighted borders and sullen waters of the Dead Sea, the ragged and
precipitous chain of mountains arising on the left, the two or three
palms clustered together, forming the single green speck on the bosom
of the waste wilderness--objects which, once seen, were scarcely to be
forgotten--showed to Sir Kenneth that they were approaching the fountain
called the Diamond of the Desert, which had been the scene of his
interview on a former occasion with the Saracen Emir Sheerkohf, or
Ilderim. In a few minutes they checked their horses beside the spring,
and the Hakim invited Sir Kenneth to descend from horseback and repose
himself as in a place of safety. They unbridled their steeds, El Hakim
observing that further care of them was unnecessary, since they would be
speedily joined by some of the best mounted among his slaves, who would
do what further was needful.

"Meantime," he said, spreading some food on the grass, "eat and drink,
and be not discouraged. Fortune may raise up or abase the ordinary
mortal, but the sage and the soldier should have minds beyond her
control."

The Scottish knight endeavoured to testify his thanks by showing himself
docile; but though he strove to eat out of complaisance, the singular
contrast between his present situation and that which he had occupied on
the same spot when the envoy of princes and the victor in combat,
came like a cloud over his mind, and fasting, lassitude, and fatigue
oppressed his bodily powers. El Hakim examined his hurried pulse, his
red and inflamed eye, his heated hand, and his shortened respiration.

"The mind," he said, "grows wise by watching, but her sister the body,
of coarser materials, needs the support of repose. Thou must sleep; and
that thou mayest do so to refreshment, thou must take a draught mingled
with this elixir."

He drew from his bosom a small crystal vial, cased in silver
filigree-work, and dropped into a little golden drinking-cup a small
portion of a dark-coloured fluid.

"This," he said, "is one of those productions which Allah hath sent
on earth for a blessing, though man's weakness and wickedness have
sometimes converted it into a curse. It is powerful as the wine-cup of
the Nazarene to drop the curtain on the sleepless eye, and to relieve
the burden of the overloaded bosom; but when applied to the purposes of
indulgence and debauchery, it rends the nerves, destroys the strength,
weakens the in