already was, with a murmur of affright.

'Zaleski?' I whispered with bated breath.

Intently as I strained my ears, I could detect no reply. The hairs of
my head, catching terror from my fancies, erected themselves.

Again I advanced, and again I became aware of the sensation of contact.
With a quick movement I passed my hand upward and downward.

It was indeed he. He was half-reclining, half-standing against a wall
of the chamber: that he was not dead, I at once knew by his uneasy
breathing. Indeed, when, having chafed his hands for some time, I tried
to rouse him, he quickly recovered himself, and muttered: 'I fainted; I
want sleep--only sleep.' I bore him back to the lighted room, assisted
by Ham in the latter part of the journey. Ham's ecstasies were
infinite; he had hardly hoped to see his master's face again. His
garments being wet and soiled, the negro divested him of them, and
dressed him in a tightly-fitting scarlet robe of Babylonish pattern,
reaching to the feet, but leaving the lower neck and forearm bare, and
girt round the stomach by a broad gold-orphreyed _ceinture_. With all
the tenderness of a woman, the man stretched his master thus arrayed on
the couch. Here he kept an Argus guard while Zaleski, in one deep
unbroken slumber of a night and a day, reposed before him. When at last
the sleeper woke, in his eye,--full of divine instinct,--flitted the
wonted falchion-flash of the whetted, two-edged intellect; the secret,
austere, self-conscious smile of triumph curved his lip; not a trace of
pain or fatigue remained. After a substantial meal on nuts, autumn
fruits, and wine of Samos, he resumed his place on the couch; and I sat
by his side to hear the story of his wandering. He said: