s on him who inflicted on you a wound!'

''Tis the fortune of life,' said Tancred, more cheerfully; 'and in truth
I was perhaps thinking of other things.'

'Do you know why I trouble you when your heart is dark?' said the young
Emir. 'See now, if you will it, you are free. The great Sheikh has
consented that you should go to Sinai. I have two dromedaries here,
fleeter than the Kamsin. At the well of Mokatteb, where we encamp for
the night, I will serve raki to the Bedouins; I have some with me,
strong enough to melt the snow of Lebanon; if it will not do, they shall
smoke some timbak, that will make them sleep like pashas. I know this
desert as a man knows his father's house; we shall be at Hebron before
they untie their eyelids. Tell me, is it good?'

'Were I alone,' said Tancred, 'without a single guard, I must return.'

'Why?'

'Because I have pledged the word of a Christian noble.'

'To a man who does not believe in Christ. Faugh! Is it not itself a sin
to keep faith with heretics?'

'But is he one?' said Tancred. 'He believes in Moses; he disbelieves in
none of the seed of Abraham. He is of that seed himself! Would I were
such a heretic as Sheikh Amalek!'

'If you will only pay me a visit in the Lebanon, I would introduce you
to our patriarch, and he would talk as much theology with you as you
like. For my own part it is not a kind of knowledge that I have much
cultivated; you know I am peculiarly situated, we have so many religions
on the mountain; but time presses; tell me, my prince, shall Hebron be
our point?'

'If Amalek believed in Baal, I must return,' said Tancred; 'even if it
were to certain death. Besides, I could not desert my men; and Baroni,
what would become of him?'

'We could easily make some plan that would extricate them. Dismiss them
from your mind, and trust yourself to me. I know nothing that would
delight me more than to baulk these robbers of their prey.'

'I should not talk of such things,' said Tancred; 'I must remain here,
or I must return.'

'What can you want to do on Mount Sinai?' murmured the prince rather
pettishly. 'Now if it were Mount Lebanon, and you had a wish to employ
yourself, there is an immense field! We might improve the condition
of the people; we might establish manufactures, stimulate agriculture
extend commerce get an appalto of the silk, buy it all up at sixty
piastres per oke, and sell it at Marseilles at two hundred and at the
same time advance the int