where I could not. She was nowhere to be found, and on inquiry I learnt she had a few hours before set off for the house of a friend. I then asked for Niger, his influence over Julius was almost unbounded, and I blamed myself for the time I had lost in thinking first of Tryphosa instead of immediately seeking for him, and sending him to appease his friend-but to my amazement I found that Niger, almost immediately after he entered the house with Julius, had mounted one of his swiftest dromedaries, and had not been heard of since.

"Much time had necessarily been lost in these fruitless inquiries, and still more I fear in giving way to those desponding and marvelling sensations, which the circumstances of the house inspired me with. I desired the servants to follow their master, but his temper was so violent they feared to go.

"On hearing this, Jaachonia's restriction had no longer any power over me, for I could not be satisfied without ascertaining her safety. I demanded which way they took, and followed the path I had so lately returned with

her. The night was light and calm, but no voice was heard, no person seen; I walked on, I called aloud, but no answer was returned. I reached the spot where we had had our interview. A man darted out of the Tamarisks that overhung the river-it was Julius! Julius alone! He came close to me and said, in a hollow, phrensied voice, 'Wait for her.-Hark!—those are her footsteps in the stream.'

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His words, and still more his manner, harrowed up my soul. I rushed down the lower banks of the Jordan, and made my way through the tangled underwood, till I reached the river. Never had it looked so deep and solemn. The dark shadows of its wooded banks fell far across it, and, excepting the flow of waters, and here and there the moonbeam gleaming in its rapid current, all was darkness and silence; yet if it had witnessed any deed of horror, it told no tale. I watched long, dreading to see her whom I loved as my sister and my friend, rise from beneath the rippling wave-nothing appeared. I walked lower down, and turned an angle

my

in the bank; a shivering horror ran through frame. The moon shone bright on the spot, the grass was flatted down, a naked osier bough, distorted, but not separated from its place of growth, hung flaunting over it. Its striped leaves were scattered below, and showed it had been clung to in vain.

"I cast off my upper garb and dived into the river, but I found her not. The rapid current had doubtless carried her far away, for though an expert swimmer I could scarcely resist its force. I returned to the house of Julius; a fever had seized his brain, and from the ravings of his delirium, we found that some one had been working on his impetuous mind to make him think evil of his wife and me. He often held arguments as with another, by which it appeared that he had not easily been wrought upon to believe the malicious report; that as an evidence of the truth of it, he had been referred to the place of our interview the evening before; that he had crept secretly along the Jordan's wooded banks, had witnessed the anxious

pacings to and fro, the earnest conversation, and the mutual joy of meeting which our countenance expressed. That he had mingled a deadly poison in the cup of wine, been stung to madness by his wife's presenting it to him, and had finished the scene of desperation, by taking her to the place where he had seen us together, and plunging her into the stream.

"O the miserable, wretched Julius! Even now my blood turns back as I recall thy ever wakeful, glaring eye, holding communion with the sightless air. Thy trembling hand mixing the deadly draught; thy labouring form dragging the suppliant victim; thy vacant arms, rising convulsive from the ruthless throw that flung away thy peace.

VOL. II.

L

CHAPTER XXXVI.

"TRYPHOSA as yet knew not of these horrors, I flew to the house of her friend to prepare her for them. Her friend had never seen her. I travelled day and night to Sebat's. Niger had not been there: I traced and pursued them to Joppa; they had embarked and were sailed for Tyre.

"I can attribute it to nothing but to that goodness of the Almighty which has since been more abundantly displayed to me, that my senses survived these repeated shocks. My health however fell a victim to them.

"Another vessel bound for Tyre was to sail in three days; I took a passage in it, but in the mean time became so exceedingly ill, that the master refused to admit me on board, fearing I should die before we made the port. This disappointment added to my disorder, and it was many moons ere I reached Tyre.