soporiferous drug. A great heaviness of sleep weighed on my brain till
late in the day. When I woke my thoughts were in wild distraction, and
a most peculiar condition of my skin held me fixed before the mirror.
It is dry as parchment, and brown as the leaves of autumn.

'July l4.--Ul-Jabal is gone! And I am left a lonely, a desolate old
man! He said, though I swore it was false, that I had grown to mistrust
him! that I was hiding something from him! that he could live with me
no more! No more, he said, should I see his face! The debt I owe him he
would forgive. He has taken one small parcel with him,--and is gone!

'July l5.--Gone! gone! In mazeful dream I wander with uncovered head
far and wide over my domain, seeking I know not what. The stone he has
with him--the precious stone of Saul. I feel the life-surge ebbing,
ebbing in my heart.'

Here the manuscript abruptly ended.

Prince Zaleski had listened as I read aloud, lying back on his Moorish
couch and breathing slowly from his lips a heavy reddish vapour, which
he imbibed from a very small, carved, bismuth pipette. His face, as far
as I could see in the green-grey crepuscular atmosphere of the
apartment, was expressionless. But when I had finished he turned fully
round on me, and said:

'You perceive, I hope, the sinister meaning of all this?'

'_Has_ it a meaning?'

Zaleski smiled.