rs, the wise and strong and
self-denying, the proclaimers of the Religion of Man. And I am but a
scrub-oak in this forest of giants, my Brothers. A scrub-oak which you
might cut down, but not uproot. Lop off my branches; apply the axe to
my trunk; make of my timber charcoal for the censers of your temples
of worship; but the roots of me are deep, deep in the soil, beyond the
reach of mortal hands. They are even spreading under your tottering
palaces and temples....

"I dream of the awakening of the East; of puissant Orient nations
rising to glorify the Idea, to build temples to the Universal
Spirit--to Art, and Love, and Truth, and Faith. What if I am lost in
the alcoves of the hills, if I vanish forever in the night? The sun
that sets must rise. It is rising and lighting up the dark and distant
continents even when setting. Think of that, ye who gloat over the
sinking of my mortal self.

"No; an idea is never too early annunciated. The good seed will grow
among the rocks, and though the heavens withhold from it the sunshine
and rain. It is because I will it, nay, because a higher Will than
mine wills it, that the spirit of Khalid shall yet flow among your
pilgrim caravans, through the fertile deserts of Arabia, down to the
fountain-head of Faith, to Mecca and Medina," et cetera.

This, perhaps the last of the rhapsodies of Khalid's, the Reader
considering the circumstances under which it was written, will no
doubt condone. Further, however, in the K. L. MS. we can not now
proceed. Certainly the Author is not wanting in the sort of courage
which is loud-lunged behind the writing table; his sufficiency of
spirit is remarkable, unutterable. But we would he knew that the
strong do not exult in their strength, nor the wise in their wisdom.
For to fly and philosophize were one thing, and to philosophize in
prison were another. Khalid this time does not follow closely in the
way of the Masters. But he would have done so, if we can believe
Shakib in this, had not Mrs. Gotfry persuaded him to the contrary. He
would have stood in the Turkish Areopagus at Constantinople, defended
himself somewhat Socratic before his judges, and hung out his tung on
a rickety gibbet in the neighborhood of St. Sophia. But Mrs. Gotfry
spoiled his great chance. She cheated him of the glory of dying for a
noble cause.

"The Turks are not worth the sacrifice," Shakib heard her say, when
Khalid ejaculated somewhat about martyrdom. And when she offe