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190
IDALIA

steam reeking from his hot flanks, took his own course over the unknown ground, and turning out of thickets, paced down a long winding aisle of cedars: the night was perfectly still, nothing was heard but the surging of the Bosphorus waters, nothing was stirring save the incessant motion of the fire-flies, that sparkled over all the boughs with starry points of light. Erceldoune had no knowledge where he was except the sea was still beside him, and he let his horse take his own way. Suddenly, through the dark masses of the cedars, light gleamed, which came neither from the fire-flies nor from the moon, but from the Turkish lattice-work of a distant easement.

Was that where his foe had found covert? He raised the Monarch's drooping head with the curb, and urged him at a canter down the cedar-aisle, the noise of the hoofs muffled in the grass, that grew untrimmed, as though the wild luxuriance of the gardens had long been left untouched. Sultan's palace, Queen's serail, sacred Mosque, or Moslem harem, he swore to that he would break down its gates, with the menace of England, and have his murderer delivered up to him, though he were surrounded by an Emir's eunuchs, or harboured in the sanctuary of the Odá itself. For anything that he knew, the light might glitter from the