comfort, I shall only be your
guest, though not a distant one.' He spoke some words in Arabic to an
attendant who entered, and who returned very shortly with a silver lamp
fed with palm oil, which he placed on the ground.

'I have two poor Englishmen here,' said Tancred, 'my servants; they must
be in sad straits; unable to speak a word----'

'I will give orders that they shall attend you. In the meantime you must
refresh yourself, however lightly, before you repose.' At this moment
there entered the tent several attendants with a variety of dishes,
which Tancred would have declined, but the young Sheikh, selecting one
of them, said, 'This, at least, I must urge you to taste, for it is
a favourite refreshment with us after great fatigue, and has some
properties of great virtue.' So saying, he handed to Tancred a dish of
bread, dates, and prepared cream, which Tancred, notwithstanding his
previous want of relish, cheerfully admitted to be excellent. After
this, as Tancred would partake of no other dish, pipes were brought to
the two young men, who, reclining on the divan, smoked and conversed.

'Of all the strange things that have happened to me to-day,' said
Tancred, 'not the least surprising, and certainly the most agreeable,
has been making your acquaintance. Your courtesy has much compensated me
for the rude treatment of your tribe; but, I confess, such refinement is
what, under any circumstances, I should not have expected to find among
the tents of the desert, any more than this French journal.'

'I am not an Arab,' said the young man, speaking slowly and with an air
of some embarrassment.

'Ah!' exclaimed Tancred.

'I am a Christian prince.'

'Yes!'

'A prince of the Lebanon, devoted to the English, and one who has
suffered much in their cause.'

'You are not a prisoner here, like myself?'

'No, I am here, seeking some assistance for those sufferers who should
be my subjects, were I not deprived of my sceptre, and they of a prince
whose family has reigned over and protected them for more than seven
centuries. The powerful tribe of which Sheikh Amalek is the head often
pitch their tents in the great Syrian desert, in the neighbourhood
of Damascus, and there are affairs in which they can aid my unhappy
people.'

'It is a great position, yours,' said Tancred, in an animated tone, 'at
the same time a Syrian and a Christian prince!'

'Yes,' said the young Emir, eagerly, 'if the English would only
underst