taste of death.  The chalice predicts indeed that I and my house shall end when the stone is lost—­a mere fiction at first, an idler’s dream then, but now—­now—­that the prophecy has stood so long a part of the reality of things, and a fact among facts—­no longer fiction, but Adamant, stern as the very word of God.  Do I not feel hourly since it has gone how the surges of life ebb, ebb ever lower in my heart?  Nay, nay, but there is hope.  I have here beside me an Arab blade of subtle Damascene steel, insinuous to pierce and to hew, with which in a street of Bethlehem I saw a Syrian’s head cleft open—­a gallant stroke!  The edges of this I have made bright and white for a nuptial of blood.

’July 2.—­I spent the whole of the last night in searching every nook and crack of the house, using a powerful magnifying lens.  At times I thought Ul-Jabal was watching me, and would pounce out and murder me.  Convulsive tremors shook my frame like earthquake.  Ah me, I fear I am all too frail for this work.  Yet dear is the love of life.

’July 7.—­The last days I have passed in carefully searching the grounds, with the lens as before.  Ul-Jabal constantly found pretexts for following me, and I am confident that every step I took was known to him.  No sign anywhere of the grass having been disturbed.  Yet my lands are wide, and I cannot be sure.  The burden of this mighty task is greater than I can bear.  I am weaker than a bruised reed.  Shall I not slay my enemy, and make an end?

’July 8.—­Ul-Jabal has been in my chamber again!  I watched him through a crack in the panelling.  His form was hidden by the bed, but I could see his hand reflected in the great mirror opposite the door.  First, I cannot guess why, he moved to a point in front of the mirror the chair in which I sometimes sit.  He then went to the box in which lie my few garments—­and opened it.  Ah, I have the stone—­safe—­safe!  He fears my cunning, ancient eyes, and has hidden it in the one place where I would be least likely to seek it—­in my own trunk!  And yet I dread, most intensely I dread, to look.

’July 9.—­The stone, alas, is not there!  At the last moment he must have changed his purpose.  Could his wondrous sensitiveness of intuition have made him feel that my eyes were looking in on him?

’July 10.—­In the dead of night I knew that a stealthy foot had gone past my door.  I rose and threw a mantle round me; I put on my head my cap of fur; I took the tempered blade in my hands; then crept out into the dark, and followed.  Ul-Jabal carried a small lantern which revealed him to me.  My feet were bare, but he wore felted slippers, which to my unfailing ear were not utterly noiseless.  He descended the stairs to the bottom of the house, while I crouched behind him in the deepest gloom of the corners and walls.  At the bottom he walked into the pantry:  there stopped, and turned the