own soul told him with how
much justice; so, without uttering a syllable, he turned away
heart-broken, from the holy and beautiful being whose affections he had
forfeited for ever.

When the patriots left Damascus, Isabelle accompanied them. Retiring to
Antioch, she lived with the sisterhood for many years; and, as her time
was passed between acts of charity and devotion, her bier was watered
with many a tear, and the hands of the grateful duly strewed her grave
with flowers. To Demetrius was destined a briefer career. All-conscious
of his miserable degradation, loathing himself, and life, and mankind, he
rushed back from the city into the Mahomedan camp; and entering, with a
hurried step, the tent of the Caliph, he tore the turban from his brow,
and cried aloud--"Oh, Abubeker! behold a God-forsaken wretch. Think not
it was the fear of death that led me to abjure my religion--the religion
of my fathers--the only true faith. No; it was the idol of Love that
stood between my heart and heaven, darkening the latter with its shadow;
and had I remained as true to God, as I did to the Maiden of my love, I
had not needed this." So saying, and ere the hand of Abubeker could
arrest him, he drew a poniard from his embroidered vest, and the
heart-blood of the renegade spouted on the royal robes of the successor
of Mahomet.

* * * * *

So grandly had James spooted this bloody story, that notwithstanding my
sleepiness, his words whiles dirled through my marrow like quicksilver,
and set all my flesh a grueing. In the middle of it, he was himself so
worked up, that twice he pulled his Kilmarnock from his head,
silk-napkin, bandage and all, and threw them down with a thump on the
table, which once wellnigh capsized a candlestick.

The porter and the stabbing, also, very nearly put me beside myself; and
I felt so queerish and eerie when I took my hat to wish him a
good-night--knowing that baith Nanse and Benjie would be neither to hold
nor bind, it being now half-past ten o'clock--that, had it not been for
the shame of the thing, and that I remembered being one of the King's
gallant volunteers, I fear I would have asked James for the lend of his
lantern, to show me down the dark close.

The reader will thus perceive that the adventure of the killing-coat,
stuck alike in the measurement and in the making by Tammie Bodkin, was
destined, in the great current of human events, to form a prominent