I speak to thee, that this miserable man is calling to his aid the evil
sorcery over which he boasts his control. To gain the end he desires, he
must pass through a crime. Sorcery whispers to him how to pass through
it, secure from the detection of man. The soul resists, but in resisting,
is weak against the tyranny of the mind to which it has submitted so long.
Question me no more. But if I vanish from thine eyes, if thou hear that
the death which, to my sorrow and in my foolishness I have failed to
recognize as the merciful minister of Heaven, has removed me at last from
the earth, believe that the pale Visitant was welcome, and that I humbly
accept as a blessed release the lot of our common humanity."

Sir Philip went to Damascus. There he found the pestilence raging, there
he devoted himself to the cure of the afflicted; in no single instance, so
at least he declared, did the antidotes stored in the casket fail in their
effect. The pestilence had passed, his medicaments were exhausted, when
the news reached him that Haroun was no more. The Sage had been found,
one morning, lifeless in his solitary home, and, according to popular
rumour, marks on his throat betrayed the murderous hand of the strangler.
Simultaneously, Louis Grayle had disappeared from the city, and was
supposed to have shared the fate of Haroun, and been secretly buried by
the assassins who had deprived him of life. Sir Philip hastened to
Aleppo. There he ascertained that on the night in which Haroun died,
Grayle did not disappear alone; with him were also missing two of his
numerous suite,--the one, an Arab woman, named Ayesha, who had for some
years been his constant companion, his pupil and associate in the mystic
practices to which his intellect had been debased, and who was said to
have acquired a singular influence over him, partly by her beauty and
partly by the tenderness with which she had nursed him through his long
decline; the other, an Indian, specially assigned to her service, of whom
all the wild retainers of Grayle spoke with detestation and terror. He