bathed the venerable cheek of the son of Bahir, as he listened to the sad recital.

Alas! the seeds of death were already sown in the fragile form of the gentle Miriam. The young sisters of Ishmael exerted themselves in vain to divert her. When they thought her somewhat recovered, they conducted her to the well of Laban, and, seated in the shade of its fig-tree, described to her the anxieties they had felt during their brother's painful absence, and related to her all that he had told them of the benevolence of Ebn Temym. On their return to the women's tent, their mother who was anxiously expecting them, received Miriam with open arms, addressed her as a daughter, and tended her with more than maternal solicitude. She despatched envoys to Gaza, for every thing she considered likely to minister either to her pleasure or restoration. "We are poor and ignorant,” said the sympathizing matron, "but our hearts expand to the influences of friendship, even as the pomegranate to the rays of that sun from which it derives both its colour and its sweetness."

Miriam was sensibly affected by these proofs of the tender interest with which she was regarded: she loved the young Sheik, but her piety, her fears with regard to another life, so forcibly impressed upon the mind of a Christian born at the sacred foot of Calvary, all combined to agitate her

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soul with wild and visionary apprehensions. She constantly fancied that she heard the voice of her martyred father calling upon her name, and in spite of the vigilant kindnesses of her Arab friends, was gradually wasting away like the wounded palm-tree of the Desert, cut by the Indian for its juicy balm.' Ishmael, with anguish he could ill conceal, beheld the beloved of his soul thus meekly descending into the valley of the shadow of death. He wandered round her tent groaning in the agony of his despair, like a young lion that has been smitten by the poisoned arrow of the hunter. His father endeavoured to soothe him under the pressure of his painful anticipations, "Allah, is good," he would say, "he allows the dove to shelter in my tent-to nestle in the bosom of my tribe.-Regard it, Ishmael, as a sign of happiness for the Wahydyahs, and let the thought that we ministered comfort and healing to the heart of the stricken daughter of the martyred Ebn Temym, be as the oil of peace on the troubled billows of thy soul."

The tender attentions lavished by this patriarchal family upon their dying guest were ineffectual. One morning, after a few moments of unusual cheerfulness, the head of Miriam declined upon her bosom, like a drooping rose of Sharon, the last sigh passed from her pale dissevered lips, and her spirit mounted at once into its native heaven. All the fibres that

had sustained the perishing form of this fragile flower were at length divided. The horrible death of her father, her religious scruples, (they might almost be called prejudices,) and the passionate depth of her affection, all united to blight a creature-once the very soul of beauty and of promise.

The lamentations of the women of the tribe of Wahydyah were loud and incessant; but Ishmael remained wrapped in a shroud of impenetrable gloom. He could not weep, for the fountain of his tears was dried up. The grief of his father was deep, but it was calmer than that of his kindred. He superintended the funeral of the hapless Miriam. She was interred in the sands under the najestic palmtrees, beneath which she had so frequently reposed, without disturbing the crucifix which the Christian virgin had never for one moment ceased to wear upon her breast.

The wretchedness of Ishmael was profound. It was in vain that his father offered him food-that he spoke to him of the interests of his tribe,-and of the wars with which it was threatened. He could never obtain from him a single syllable in reply. But the repose of this simple family was menaced soon after this sad catastrophe, by the Aga of Gaza; and a general retreat to the Desert of Mephaath, beyond the Dead Sea, in the land of the Moabites, was decided upon by the elders of the tribe. They were all

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occupied in preparing for their departure, when, towards the close of the day before that on which they were to have set out, the sun appeared surrounded by a crimson halo; the skies wild and overcast, yielded a lurid light; the birds flew towards the west, skimming, in continual circles, along the boundless plain; the heavens seemed luminous, while the air was gloomy and opaque. The palmtree let fall its flexible branches to the earth, as if it too had partaken of the general blight; and the plaintive cries of animals in the vast solitudes around, announced, in language not to be misunderstood, the approach of the merciless Simoom,-the pestilential wind-the terror of the Desert.

Ishmael smiled in the anticipation of this awful visitation. He repaired to the grave of his beloved Miriam; removed the sand that covered her beautiful form; pressed the relic that reposed upon her bosom to his heart, in token that he had forsworn the creed of his tribe and embraced that of the daughter of Ebn Temym; and then removing the veil from her alabaster face, gazed once more upon it with the pure and delighted consciousness that he should soon be reunited to her for ever in that blissful land, in which thirst, weariness, and blight, are equally unknown. The features of his beloved were still unwasted by decay. She seemed to smile upon her Ishmael, and to rejoice that he had adopted the religious

belief of her people. "Come, my beloved," she appeared to say, "thou art now exclusively my own : leave thy vale of tears for those blissful habitations which are prepared for the devoted followers of the merciful and omnipotent God of Miriam and Ebn Temym." "I obey thy call," he replied, implanting a fervid kiss upon her marble brow-" I come. Take, adored of my soul, the chaste embrace of thy bridegroom of the tomb ;- the links that bind me to earth will soon be broken; and we shall then, if I am not deceived by the impulses newly stirring within me, be reunited for ever!"

His voice was the voice of a prophecy, too speedily to be fulfilled. A dark red cloud rose in the east; the whirlwind made a chaos of the tranquil Desert; the date-trees were plucked up by the roots; and sandy billows rolled over the plain. In this fearful inundation the son of Ahmed disappeared; the surging sand swept over him as he bent to kiss the forehead of his Miriam. He sleeps the sleep of death with the daughter of Ebn Temym. "They were lovely and pleasant in their lives, in their deaths they were not divided."