370 WHAT THE MOON SAW.

Already she lifted her hand to pull the door-bell—a hare’s foot
fastened to a string formed the bell-handle of the imperial palace.
She paused for a moment—of what might she be thinking?
Perhaps of the beautiful Christ-child, dressed in gold and silver,
which was down below in the chapel, where the silver candle-
sticks gleamed so bright, and where her little friends sang the
hymns in which she also could join? I know not. Presently she.
moved again—she stumbled; the earthen vessel fell from her
head, and broke on the marble steps. She burst into tears. The
beautiful daughter of the imperial palace wept over the worthless
broken pitcher; with her bare feet she stood there weeping, and
dared not pull the string, the bell-rope of the imperial palace.”

TWENTIETH EVENING.

It was more than a fortnight since the Moon had shone. Now ,
he stood once more, round and bright, above the clouds, moving
slowly onward. Hear what the Moon told me.

“From a town in Fezzan I followed a caravan. On the margin
of the sandy desert, ina salt plain, that shone like a frozen lake,
and was only covered in spots with light drifting sand, a halt was
made. The eldest of the company—the water-gourd hung at his
girdle, and on his head was a little bag of unleavened bread—
drew a square in the sand with his staff, and wrote in it a few words
out of the Koran, and then the whole caravan passed over the
consecrated spot. A young merchant, a child of the East, as I
could tell by his eye and his figure, rode pensively forward on his
white snorting steed. Was he thinking, perchance, of his fair
young wife? It was only two days ago that the camel, adorned
with furs and with costly shawls, had carried her, the beauteous
bride, round the walls of the city, while drums and cymbals had
sounded, the women sang, and festive shots, of which the bride-
groom fired the greatest number, resounded round the camel ;
and now he was journeying with the caravan across the desert.

“For many nights I followed the train. I saw them rest by
the well-side among the stunted palms; they thrust the knife into
the breast of the camel that had fallen, and roasted its flesh by
the fire. My beams cooled the glowing sands, and showed them
the black rocks, dead islands in the immense ocean of sand. No
hostile tribes met them in their pathless route, no storms arose,
no columns of sand whirled destruction over the journeying cara-
van. At home the beautiful wife prayed for her husband and her
father. ‘ Are they dead?’ she asked of my golden crescent; ‘Are
they dead ?’ she cried to my full disc. Now the desert lies behind
them. This evening they sit beneath the lofty palm trees, whére
the crane flutters round them with its long wings, and the pelican
watches them from the branches of the mimosa. The luxuriant
herbage is trampled down, crushed by the feet of elephants. A