you are free, for the road is clear and nothing can overtake the twelve
swiftest camels in Zimboe. Go, therefore, and be happy, forgetting
no word that has passed my lips. For all my words are true, even to a
certain promise which I made you lately by the mouth of Metem, and which
I now fulfil--that I would join you on your road lest you should deem me
faithless to the troth which I have so often sworn to you.

"King Ithobal, this shape is yours; come now and take your prize. Prince
Aziel, my soul is yours, in life it shall companion you, and in death
await you. Prince Aziel, I come to you." Then, before he could answer
a single word, with one swift and sudden spring she hurled herself from
the cliff edge to fall crushed upon the road beneath.

Aziel saw. In his agony he strained so fiercely at the bonds which
held him that they burst like rushes. He leapt from the camel and knelt
beside Elisa. She was not yet dead, for her eyes were open and her lips
stirred.

"I have kept faith, keep it also, Aziel! the story is not yet done," she
gasped. Then her life flickered out, and her spirit passed.

Aziel rose from beside the corpse and looked upward. There upon the
edge of the rock above him, leaning forward, his eyes blind with horror,
stood Ithobal the king. Aziel saw him, and a fury entered into his heart
because this man, whose jealous rage and evil doing had bred such woe
and caused the death of his beloved still lived upon the earth. By the
prince was Metem, who, for once, had no words, and from his hand he
snatched a bow, set an arrow on the string and loosed.

The shaft rushed upwards, it smote Ithobal between the joints of his
harness so that the point of it sunk through this neck.

"This gift, king Ithobal, from Aziel the Israelite," he cried, as the
arrow sped.

For a moment the great man stood still, then he opened his arms wide and
of a sudden plunged downward, falling with a crash on the roadway, where
he lay dead at the side of dead Elissa.

*****

"The play is played, and the fate fulfilled," cried Metem. "See, the
servants of the king speed yonder with their evil tidings; let us away
lest we bide here with these two for ever."

"That is my desire," said Aziel.

"A desire which may not be fulfilled," answered Metem. "Come, Prince,
since we cannot go without you. Surely you do not wish to sacrifice the
lives of all of us as an offering to the great spirit of the lady who is
dead. It is one that sh