semblance of a gigantic hand, moving as if to stay the uplifted blade; but too late. The sword fell, and, as it reached the neck of the victim, he uttered the awful words, ‘I curse ye all who--’ the rest of the sentence was spoken in eternity; but there came a clamor and a clangor as of a thousand protesting spectral voices, and one of them said, in tones of thunder, ‘This youth, by persistence of will, had unbarred the gates between this world and that of mystery. He was the first of his and thy race that ever achieved so great an honor. And ye have slain him, and he hath cursed thee, by reason of which thou, O king! and thou, O vizier! and the dead man, have all changed the human for another nature. The first shall go down the ages, transmigrating from form to form. Thou, O vizier! shall also exist till thou art forgiven;--DHOULA BEL shall be thy name; and thou shalt tempt the king through long ages, and be foiled whenever the youth--who shall be called the STRANGER--shall so will, for the sake of the love he bore thy daughter. This drama shall last and be until a son of Adam shall wed with a daughter of Ish, or thou, king, in one of the phases of thy being, shall love, and be truly, fully loved again, and for thyself alone. An eternity may elapse ere then!’” * * * * * “Ask me not,” said the young Beverly, “_why_, but believe me when I say that I _know_ that ages ago I was that king; that the Stranger has been seen by my mother; that Dhoula Bel still haunts and tempts me for the sin of ages. I know the fate impending over me, and that in this my present form I am a neutral being, for whom there is no hope save through the union of myself, a son of Adam’s race, with a daughter of Ish, one not of Adam’s race.... This, then, is the dreadful fate to which I was left so pitilessly exposed on the morning that my mother died on Manhattan Island--left to pay the penalty of a crime committed thousands of years ago.” CHAPTER III. A SPECTRAL VISITANT. It must be confessed that this was a singular story, and smelled very strongly of either Hartz-mountainism or its equivalent, imagination. He continued his story thus: “I did not know all this at five years old, of course. The only thing I did fully comprehend was the loss of my mother--her strange silence--the woeful look of those who hugged my little head and said ‘Poor child!’ I tried hard to be manly and not cry, as they bade me, but it was useless, and the tears welled up in floods from my poor little childish heart. Have you ever lost a mother?