has once beheld and partaken of it. In short, I recognized in the hands
of the Dervish the bright life-renewer, as I had borne it away from the
corpse of the Sage of Aleppo."

"Hold! Are you then, in truth, the murderer of Haroun, and is your true
name Louis Grayle?"

"I am no murderer, and Louis Grayle did not leave me his name. I again
adjure you to postpone, for this night at least, the questions you wish to
address to me.

"Seeing that this obstinate pauper possessed that for which the pale
owners of millions, at the first touch of palsy or gout, would consent to
be paupers, of course I coveted the possession of the essence even more
than the knowledge of the substance from which it is extracted. I had no
coward fear of the experiment, which this timid driveller had not the
nerve to renew. But still the experiment might fail. I must traverse
land and sea to find the fit place for it, while, in the rags of the
Dervish, the unfailing result of the experiment was at hand. The Dervish
suspected my design, he dreaded my power. He fled on the very night in
which I had meant to seize what he refused to sell me. After all, I
should have done him no great wrong; for I should have left him wealth
enough to transport himself to any soil in which the material for the
elixir may be most abundant; and the desire of life would have given his
shrinking nerves the courage to replenish its ravished store. I had Arabs
in my pay, who obeyed me as hounds their master. I chased the fugitive.
I came on his track, reached a house in a miserable village, in which, I
was told, he had entered but an hour before. The day was declining, the
light in the room imperfect. I saw in a corner what seemed to me the form
of the Dervish,--stooped to seize it, and my hand closed on an asp. The