emounted, and
proceeded to scour the plain, over which now slowly fell the starlight
and shade of night. When Leila stole, at last, to the room in which
Almamen was hid, she found him, stretched on his mantle, in a deep
sleep. Exhausted by all he had undergone, and his rigid nerves, as it
were, relaxed by the sudden softness of that interview with his child,
the slumber of that fiery wanderer was as calm as an infant's. And their
relation almost seemed reversed; and the daughter to be as a mother
watching over her offspring, when Leila seated herself softly by him,
fixing her eyes--to which the tears came ever, ever to be brushed
away-upon his worn but tranquil features, made yet more serene by the
quiet light that glimmered through the casement. And so passed the
hours of that night; and the father and the child--the meek convert, the
revengeful fanatic--were under the same roof.

CHAPTER IV. ALMAMEN HEARS AND SEES, BUT REFUSES TO BELIEVE; FOR THE BRAIN,
OVERWROUGHT, GROWS DULL, EVEN IN THE KEENEST.

The dawn broke slowly upon the chamber, and Almamen still slept. It was
the Sabbath of the Christians--that day on which the Saviour rose from
the dead--thence named so emphatically and sublimely by the early Church
THE LORD'S DAY.

[Before the Christian era, the Sunday was, however, called the
Lord's day--i.e., the day of the Lord the Sun.]

And as the ray of the sun flashed in the east it fell like a glory,
over a crucifix, placed in the deep recess of the Gothic casement; and
brought startlingly before the eyes of Leila that face upon which the
rudest of the Catholic sculptors rarely fail to preserve the mystic and
awful union of the expiring anguish of the man with the lofty patience
of the God. It looked upon her, that face; it invited, it encouraged,
while it thrilled and subdued. She stole gently from the side of her
father; she crept to the spot, and flung herself on her knees beside the
consecrated image.

"Support me, O Redeemer!" she murmured--"support thy creature!
strengthen her steps in the blessed path, though it divide her
irrevocably from all that on earth she loves: and if there be a
sacrifice in her solemn choice, accept, O Thou, the Crucified! accept
it, in part atonement of the crime of her stubborn race; and, hereafter,
let the lips of a maiden of Judaea implore thee, not in vain, for some
mitigation of the awful curse that hath fallen justly upon her tribe."

As broken by low sobs,