Page:The Coming Race, etc - 1888.djvu/226

212 "Who? Of whom speakest thou?"

"My pursuers—the horsemen of the Spaniard."

"Oh, señora, save him!" cried Leila, turning to Donna Inez, whom both father and child had hitherto forgotten, and who now stood gazing upon Almamen with wondering and anxious eyes. "Whither can he fly? The vaults of the castle may conceal him. This way—hasten!"

"Stay," said Inez, trembling, and approaching close to Almamen: "do I see aright? and, amidst the dark change of years and trial, do I recognize that stately form, which once contrasted to the sad eye of a mother the drooping and faded form of her only son? Art thou not he who saved my boy from the pestilence, who accompanied him to the shores of Naples, and consigned him to these arms? Look on me! dost thou not recall the mother of thy friend?"

"I recall thy features dimly and as in a dream," answered the Hebrew; "and while thou speakest, there rush upon me the memories of an earlier time, in lands, where Leila first looked upon the day, and her mother sung to me at sunset, by the stream of the Euphrates,, and on the sites of departed empires. Thy son I remember now: I had friendship then with a Christian for I was still young."

"Waste not the time—father—señora!" cried Leila, impatiently clinging still to her father's breast.

"You are right; nor shall your sire, in whom I thus wonderfully recognize my son's friend, perish if I can save him."

Inez then conducted her strange guest to a small door in the rear of the castle; and after leading him through some of the principal apartments, left him in one of the tiring-rooms, adjoining her own chamber, and the entrance to which the arras concealed. She rightly judged this a safer retreat than the vaults of the castle might afford, since her great name and known intimacy with Isabel would preclude all suspicion of her abetting in the escape of the fugitive, and keep those places the most secure in which, without such aid, he could not have secreted himself.

In a few minutes, several of the troop arrived at the castle, and on learning the name of its, owner, contented themselves with searching the gardens, and the lower and more exposed apartments; and then recommending to the servants a vigilant look-out, remounted, and proceeded to scour the plain, over which now slowly fell the starlight and shade of night.

When Leila stole, at last, to the room in which Almamen was hid, she found him, stretched on his mantle, in a deep sleep. Exhausted