221

Cornado of Salamanca.

Dedicated to the Knights of Ak-Sat-Ben.

The room of the Arabian sage was as dusky as the half-fallen night Yet through the glom Francisco Vasqnez de Corondado could see mystic signs of the astrologers, tokens of an esoteric faith, and old Egyptian [i?ics} Among them was the man of destiny-old-old and very miserable with years spent in caves of the Arabian deserts, very allen looked he too, amid the gay life if Salamanca, where those who wished to read the dark page of the future came to him For his leaning was as a lamp which he held high, illuminating even those things which to all others were unknowable

In its tripod the incense smoed and fumed, sickening the air and dulling the scene, and over his crackling parchments bent the sage, reaching there with necrmatic power, the story of the cavallers life Beribboned and gaudy was the cavalier, with haughty hold of head and fashionable trick of manner Yet his plumed hat was doffed before the learning of this ancient man-before the knowledge that he had wrenched from star and water, from crystal globe and entrail of beast, from all the signs that lie in the living created things, whereby men may grow wisdom Figures and diagrams covered the sheets that lay ont he worm-eaten table, and over these again and again, as following a decious way, the long forefinger of the sage went in perplexing tracery

'The stars in the courses, he said at the length, with voice as faint, yet deep as the sound of surf on distant shores, tell this one tale Lord of a vast dominio shall you be, and mighty of conquest. Over vast waters, past pountains that lose their summints in the clouds, past plains that rolls for leagues, past the seeing of they eyes, is that land, overy which you shall rule by right of sunjugation Love will be yours and power and plentitude. But over all falls a shadow dark as death-for it is the shadow of death Not that fair death which offers man a rest the end of his long journey, but violent and unseemly death"

The young calalier trembles in every member of his great frame.

'Tell mem tell me' The nature of it- speak- it may be avoided"

'Destiny is never avodifed. my sun Wair, I will see."

He took a globe of crystal, rubbed it again and again with his hands, breathed on it thrice then held it before they eye of the hard-breathing vacalier And in those crystal depths, as he looked,