buds, whispered to one another of its mysterious appearance, and alleged for it miraculous origin.  One day as it fed among lilies, the princess near by, overcome by the heat, slumbered.  She slept long and heavily, and when she awoke her favourite was nowhere to be seen.  Calling and weeping, she wandered through vale and glade, searching the hare’s covert, but starting back, for she descried a viper there; peering into the den of a wild beast and shuddering, for it was strewn with bones; hastening to a gorgeous clump of bloom where she thought it might have rested, but the splendid blossoms were poisonous and she turned away.  All the dark, damp, dangerous night she sought, and it was morning when she found the gentle creature stretched on the moss, its piteous eyes glazed over with death, for it had been pursued and had sunk from exhaustion.

In delirious ravings Sangita told her people that when she knelt on the moss, and, wringing her hands, bewailed that it had not sought the shelter of a Secure Resting Place, the gazelle reproached her.

‘I know not of that country,’ it said, ‘it is not here.’

And this, although the wild speech of a fevered brain, gained credit with the populace, and the Wild Gazelle cherished by the good princess became a memory fraught with awe and superstition.  For me, I believe that the devout and good heart utters wisdom unawares, and that the tongue habituated to golden speech may drop riches even when the light of reason is withdrawn.  The sickness of Sangita was mortal, but her mind cleared before she expired, and she then obtained from the King her father a promise that over her ashes should be erected a lodge whose door, never fastened, might afford a Haven of Retreat such as her fevered dream desired!”

They looked on the tomb, its walls gleamed white through the foliage that draped it.  It was old and neglected.  The door was nearly concealed from view by the luxuriant growth of many years, and when they examined it closely they found that it hung on one rusty hinge.

“May we believe,” asked Bertram, “that the tender fancy of the dying princess was ever verified by the actual shelter here of a fugitive?”

“The story is ancient,” replied Nawab Khan, “and I cannot say.  The lesson she taught would forbid the finding anywhere a Place of Rest.”

But it neared the hour of the devout man’s prayers and he left them.

“Nawab Khan,” said Atma, “speaks not as he believes, for many are the Havens of the Mohammedan.”

“Ay,” said Bertram, “and does not every creed too soon become a secure retreat to the spirit of man to which God has denied the repose of certainty.  We crave knowledge which is withheld more earnestly than we desire faith or hope, and we eagerly make even its semblance a foothold.  It appears to me, my friend, with whom I am grown bold, that you and I may find in our less material beliefs as false a haven as the pilgrim finds in his Mecca.”