ng been made up
of rough blocks of broken marble and the capital of a fallen pillar.
The coloured lizards slipped away, startled, from before her feet, but
she was not frightened at them. Already she lifted her hand to pull
the door-bell--a hare's foot fastened to a string formed the
bell-handle of the imperial palace. She paused for a moment--of what
might she be thinking? Perhaps of the beautiful Christ-child,
dressed in gold and silver, which was down below in the chapel,
where the silver candlesticks gleamed so bright, and where her
little friends sung the hymns in which she also could join? I know
not. Presently she moved again--she stumbled: the earthen vessel
fell from her head, and broke on the marble steps. She burst into
tears. The beautiful daughter of the imperial palace wept over the
worthless broken pitcher; with her bare feet she stood there
weeping; and dared not pull the string, the bell-rope of the
imperial palace!"

TWENTIETH EVENING

It was more than a fortnight since the Moon had shone. Now he
stood once more, round and bright, above the clouds, moving slowly
onward. Hear what the Moon told me.

"From a town in Fezzan I followed a caravan. On the margin of
the sandy desert, in a salt plain, that shone like a frozen lake,
and was only covered in spots with light drifting sand, a halt was
made. The eldest of the company--the water gourd hung at his girdle,
and on his head was a little bag of unleavened bread--drew a square in
the sand with his staff, and wrote in it a few words out of the Koran,
and then the whole caravan passed over the consecrated spot. A young
merchant, a child of the East, as I could tell by his eye and his
figure, rode pensively forward on his white snorting steed. Was he
thinking, perchance, of his fair young wife? It was only two days
ago that the camel, adorned with furs and with costly shawls, had
carried her, the beauteous bride, round the walls of the city, while
drums and cymbals had sounded, the women sang, and festive shots, of
which the bridegroom fired the greatest number, resounded round the
camel; and now he was journeying with the caravan across the desert.

"For many nights I followed the train. I saw them rest by the
wellside among the stunted palms; they thrust the knife into the
breast of the camel that had fallen, and roasted its flesh by the
fire. My beams cooled the glowing sands, and showed them the black
rocks, dead islands in the immense ocean of s