-the voice of that stern spirit, as he calls upon her soul-and quickly it obeys. Though leaving a bosom that heaves with hurrying throes, though parting from lips panting and gasping for the faintest breath, yet in a moment it is away, and all is marble, or as motionless. One convulsive shudder as the tyrant enters his domain, and the sad, the lone, the beautiful, is for ever still.

When death had set his signet upon her features, with that stern fixedness and pallor, of which there is no counterfeit, after gazing for a moment upon the sweet smile that still lingered about her lips, they left the couch, and retired still to weep. Far from her home, that gentle being had come to find love, a changing lover, and a grave. Even for him who had deserted her she had died; repaying neglect with truth, forgetfulness with unalterable fidelity. She was too gentle to bear the blighting frost which had destroyed the young blossom of her hopes. She had borne sorrow until its very malice had befriended her; and her spirit, wearied with griefs, has passed where they cannot follow.

Gathered in early spring, this sweet wild flower from the sunny vale of Khorasan, had bloomed for a short summer amid the gay gardens of Bagdad; but rude winds laid it soon low, and it now fades beneath the green cypress upon the banks of the Tigris.

CHAPTER XII.

Verily we sent down the Koran in the night Al Kadr. And what shall make thee understand how excellent is that night? The night Al Kadr is better than a thousand months. Therein do the angels descend, and the spirit Gabriel, by the permission of their Lord, with his decrees concerning every matter. It is peace until the rising of the morn.—Koran.

THERE is a holy night in the Moslem's year. The "night of excellence" it is called. Upon this night "many wonders, secret and invisible, are performed. All inanimate things adore God; the waters of the sea lose their saltness, and become fresh and sweet, in these mysterious moments." This is the hour for devotion. This is the hour for praise. Upon this night are the Divine decrees for the ensuing year brought down from the highest heavens, and given to the charge of angels to execute. This is the hour for prayer; ere the scroll is written, ere the decree has gone forth. Let the sinner, though his crimes were numberless, then turn in supplication to the Most High, and it were worth heaven to him. Prayer upon this night is better than the prayers of a thousand months. Yet it hath not pleased the all-wise Allah to reveal the time of this night to mortals; no saint nor prophet hath declared it. Watch, therefore, and pray con

tinually, lest it escape. "Since you know not," says the Koran, "the time of this night, so act that each night may hold you the place of this."

When all the world is sleeping and at rest, Abassa watches, weeps, and prays. Many a lone hour she passes in supplication to Heaven, that her sorrows may be removed away. In the silence of the night many a tear falls from her eyes to earth, and many a sigh is wafted as grateful incense to that land from whence only she can look for relief. No one on earth can aid her now. Whither, then, should the trembler turn? To Heaven. Alas! that we so long delay our approach to that sure fortress; that we should wait till sorrows or dangers gather around us, and drive us to its shelter; and then how are our hopes deadened, our confidence destroyed, by the thought that it is our need, and not our will, that urges us. Though her own griefs press sorely upon her spirits, yet she forgets not the departed Khatoun. She often mingles with her devotions a prayer for her peace, and weeps too, as she remembers her constancy and truth.

Is prayer of none effect? Is Heaven pitiless? or has mercy, that sits above, bending for ever from the clouds, retired deep into yon blue abyss, wearied with her gentle office? Spring comes; yet with it comes not peace. The crisis of her fate draws nigh. Months of misery have saddened and thinned her face; feeble and trembling, she looks not for relief, but in calm despair awaits that hour

which should bring the mother joy and a new love, but from which she expects naught but grief and danger. She has not failed to leave Bagdad, to court the pure air that wanders unconfined through those pleasant gardens upon the Tigris; she visits often the good old Ibrahim, and in his bosom reposes her sorrows. Yet all these avail not. Paler and paler becomes her cheek, deeper and deeper her gloom; her danger nearer, her hope more distant.

Giafar is with her, sad and comfortless. His courage and endurance had been tried to the uttermost, and had yielded at one time to the severe pressure of danger and horror that had descended upon him, as the staunch bark bends to the sweeping winds, and stoops into the deep, labouring and o'erpressed by the thick-coming waters. Yet, as that bark emerges from the waves, and dashes again undaunted through the deep, so rose from their prostration the fortitude and firmness of the prince, impaired in nowise by the trials which had, for a time, endangered them. In addition to this, however, he had passed through the furnace of affliction, and sorrow had done that which terror had not been able to accomplish. It had permanently depressed his spirit; it had clouded his face with gloom, and rendered him, for a long time, deaf to all consolation, even though whispered by the dear voice of his wife, and insensible to all pleasure, though shared and sweetened by her presence. The fate of the gentle and hapless Khatoun had

laved his soul with the waters of grief, and had torn away its best defences, and now, remorse and self-reproach were rolling in upon his untrenched bosom.

The death of that soft being who had so loved him, and so suffered for him, filled his soul with regret. He remembered the love which he had so lightly given her, but which she had treasured up like gold refined, and though custom authorized, and religion sanctioned all his actions, yet the evil was too plain; it had, as it were, become palpable by her sufferings. He remembered the sacrifice which she had made for him; he called to mind her last hours, when even Heaven was almost forgotten, and her thoughts seemed bound up in him, and in his safety. Memory was a fiend to torture him. He had endured worse than death, and, save for his duty to others, would long ere this have given up his life into his master's hands.

He prostrates himself in prayer often for the happiness and safety of his sorrowing wife, and often for the peace of the departed Khatoun. He scatters alms with prodigal hand, and begs the prayers of scheick and imam. They bless his piety, and pray for the sweet dead. He reared no marble over her tomb. He paid no outward testimonies of sorrow; but he has written out, as he had promised, a fair epitaph; the story of her innocence and truth, that in after times the world may know of her fidelity, and weep over her unhappy fate.

Summer comes. The hour is past. From the